A neighbour used to make this fruity coffee cake weekly. They had a huge boxy house with two kitchens, where the second kitchen was for making desserts and canning. I always thought having a kitchen for large batch cooking was a fantastic idea.
Ingredients
Cake
- 1⅔ cups cake flour
- 1 cup sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- 3 tsp baking powder
- ⅓ cup neutral oil
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
- ⅔ cup whole milk
Fruit
- 2 cups diced fruit or small berries
Crumble topping
- 1 cup cake flour
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup butter, cold
Method
Heat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Butter a half sheet pan (2.5 cm / 1 in deep) and line it with parchment.
Stir the oil, vanilla, eggs, and milk together in a large bowl. Add the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder, and mix only until blended; too much mixing makes it chewier than cake should be.
Spread the batter in the pan. Scatter the fruit evenly over it.
Rub the crumble ingredients together with your fingers until crumbly, and sprinkle evenly over the fruit.
Bake until golden and a skewer in the cake layer comes out clean, 25–35 minutes.
Notes
- Strawberries and rhubarb were the best fruit, as I remember it; blueberries were also quite good. The fruit amount is a guess, since the old recipe card didn’t give one.
- All-purpose flour works in place of cake flour, but the cake will be slightly chewier.
- Parchment over the greased pan makes it much easier to get out.
- The neighbours’ house (and its two kitchens) turns up in The smells of India.