When I bake, I end up making more than I could possibly consume, so I end up wrapping up items in wax paper, then foil and then a zip top bag and pop it in the freezer (currently, my freezer is close to over-flowing and I would kill for a larger one). Well, I just noticed that I had half of a pear crumb coffee cake in my freezer. Total score! I’d totally forgotten about it, and I forgot that I had started to write a post about it last fall. So, here it is…later than I’d wanted. I just adapted my blueberry coffee cake recipe from my mom and adapted another recipe I found online on Cooks dot com. It’s simple and you don’t even need a mixer. You can use milk (or even buttermilk) in the recipe, but I substituted unsweetened vanilla almond milk because that’s all I had on hand. Oh, and don’t over do it on the cinnamon or cardamon, as that is a lesson I learned a long time ago.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, spray an 8×8 baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.

Coffee Cake

• 1 1/4 C. AP flour
• 1/2 C. light brown sugar
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp cardamon
• 1/2 C. almond milk
• 4 TB unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1-2 tsp vanilla
• 2 ripe pears, cored, peeled (if you want) and cubed into 1/2 inch pieces

Topping

• 1/2 C. white sugar
• 1/4 C. flour
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 3 TB cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/4 C. chopped pecans

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk egg, cooled melted butter,
vanilla, and milk. Add wet ingredients to dry and add pears, stir to combine. Add mixture to baking dish.

For the crumb topping, mix sugar, flour, cinnamon and cut in cold butter either with a pastry cutter or your hands. Break up butter until it’s the size of tiny peas (it’s okay if some pieces are bigger). Add chopped pecans. Evenly sprinkle streusel on top of cake batter. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown on top and when a toothpick comes out clean.