Honey-Crunch Coffee Cake

Friday Cakeblogging-now with photograph of my son to indicate scale! Sorry, that joke needs explaining. When I was an undergrad one of my very favourite (though elderly) professors would show us slides from archaeological sites she'd visited or worked on that always had a photograph of her mother "for scale." In her day, it would have been very unusual for an unmarried woman to travel alone without a chaperone-so "mother" featured prominently throughout her travels. Of course, you really don't need cakes compared to a very tall two year old for scale, but then gratuitous photographs of one's child might be considered bragging. Yeah, I love the little punk. Actually, I just had a funny/not really funny thought. Anyone remember that Atom Egoyan movie about the serial killer who as a kid had to assist his mother on her cooking show and was sort of famous/infamous as the little helper? I think it was called Felicia's Journey (yeah, I could go open another window and Google it but with Windows 98 and a dial-up connection, opening another window will mean my photos take even longer to post). Anyway, isn't it amazing how I get completely off topic when I've had but three hours of sleep? Hmmm. Right now my brain is muttering "well gosh, I didn't think he'd end up a serial killer-I just posed him next to a couple of cakes…"

This coffee cake has it all-pineapple, coconut, honey, and even cornflakes in the topping! As it is not yeast raised, the preparation was quick and the clean-up simple as well. There's a very small amount of butter in the topping and a bit of cooking oil in the cake, but compared to the chocolate cheesecake and other dangers to your arteries that regularly appear at this blog-this cake is relatively light. I added 2 teaspoons of cardamom to the batter (because I really like it) but you may wish to go lighter, or not at all. The original recipe that I altered beyond recognition called for mace.

You Will Need:

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon mace OR 1-2 teaspoons cardamom
8 oz tin of crushed pineapple, drained with syrup reserved
Enough milk to round up the syrup to ½ cup liquid
1 beaten egg
¼ cup cooking oil
1/3 cup honey
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup crushed cornflakes
¼ cup coconut

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Grease a 9-inch round cake pan or pie plate. Combine in a large bowl, the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cardamom. Add the required milk to the pineapple juice and add beaten egg and cooking oil. Add to the flour and beat until smooth. In a small bowl, cream together the honey and butter until light. Mix in the pineapple, corn flakes and coconut. Spread the batter in the pan first, then the topping. Bake for 25-30 minutes.