Coffee Crumble Cake

How do you like your coffee? With milk or without? Cappuccino, Macchiato, Espresso,  Latte?  Served to you by a hansom Italian barista? Are you a coffee aficionado? Do you even care if your coffee comes from a drip filter, espresso machine or straight from the jar?

Here's my take on coffee:

I love real coffee from an espresso machine.

I love the smell of fresh ground coffee as much as the taste.

I drink Italian coffee at home... so there.

I love my coffee out of a proper coffee cup. Yes, I'm a coffee snob.

I don't like coffee on the run ie. walking around and out of a paper cup (see above). I like to sit down and drink my coffee, preferably in an Italian coffee shop, but my kitchen is where most of my coffee drinking takes place... usually imagining I'm in Degraves Street.

I could drink coffee in the morning before breakfast, with breakfast, after breakfast, just before a workout (for the performance enhancing benefits, of course), after a workout (as part of my recovery), before lunch, with lunch, after lunch, in the afternoon to get me through the mid-afternoon slump, after dinner to enhance the dessert eating experience and at night (and suffer the owl-like consequences). I could drink coffee reading the newspapers, watching TV, alone or with company.  But the truth is, I usually have one cup of joe every other day. Because if you think I blather endlessly to you about this, that and the other thing now, who knows how much worse it would be if I actually drank more than that.

Oh, and I like coffee with coffee cake... though it's not like me to gild the lilly... much.

Coffee Crumble Cake
cake adapted from Donna Hay's Seasons, crumble topping from Belinda Jeffrey's Mix & Bake
Serves 6

For the Cake:
150g butter, softened
130g brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk, extra
150g plain flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon instant coffee
1 teaspoon hot water
60ml buttermilk

For the Crumple Topping:
40g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
30g brown sugar
30g cold batter, cut into small pieces
30g coarsely chopped pecans

Make the Crumble Topping:
Put the flour, cinnamon and brown sugar into a food processor and whiz them together for 10 second to mix. Add the cubes of butter and whiz again until the mixture resembles course breadcrumbs. Add the pecans and pulse a few times so that they break up a little more and mix in. Tip the mixture into a bowl and set aside.

Make the Cake:
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. Grease a 18cm round cake pan and line the base with baking paper.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl and set aside.

Place coffee in a small cup, add hot water and sit to mix.

Place butter and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until pale and fluffy, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add egg and egg yolk and beat well. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just combined. Add the coffee mixture and fold it through the batter.

Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan. Scatter the crumble mixture over the cake and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove it from the pan and let to cool on a wire rack. (When you invert it to remove it from the pan, a little of the crumble might escape, but not much.)