Yeasted Plum Coffee Cake

I’m really late with this month’s Bread Baking Babes a.k.a BBB bread which is a Yeasted Plum Coffee Cake with an Oatmeal Streusel Topping. Actually, Judy picked a Zoe Francis recipe for Yeasted Blueberry Coffee Cake. I don’t get blueberries here so I went with plums instead.

This Yeasted Plum Coffee Cake uses a brioche dough recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It was a good opportunity to revisit my copy of the book after ages. This recipe also involves making a skillet jam with fresh fruit, which is layered within the bread. One can use whatever fruit is in season to make the jam for this coffee cake. Of course, slightly tart and sweet fruit makes a jam that works better here.  Samruddhi, a good friend and sourdough baker par excellence, recently brought me some of her homemade plum jam.

So this is an enriched yeasted bread or yeasted cake layered with jam and topped with a streusel. It is easy enough to make. The dough is a no-knead dough and just needs mixing well. The skillet jam is easy to make as well, and can be made ahead of making the coffee cake. The streusel comes together in 5 minutes. All the remaining time is mostly spent allowing the dough to rise.

This recipe turned out into a bit of an adventure for me. It rained very heavily and mostly without break most of this month where I live.  33 dams across Kerala were opened to release excess water. All this resulted in severe floods in the state. We were lucky to live where the waters didn’t even come close at all.

I was short of certain ingredients needed for this recipe and not in a position to go shopping for them. So I made some substitutions and my Yeasted Plum Coffee Cake turned out a bit different in taste and texture. It was good though.

I had no butter or eggs as we’re still in our “eating vegan” phase. So I left out the eggs and added a little more water to compensate for the liquid. I substituted oil for butter (generally, about 3/4 cup oil for 1 cup butter works). I also discovered I had run out of all-purpose flour. Instead, I made my yeasted coffee cake with whole wheat flour. So I ended up with a brown colored, slightly denser but delicious yeasted cake.

If you want to try using whole wheat flour, I would suggest substituting for just half the all-purpose flour. Unless your family and friends don’t mind a denser coffee cake. To make this coffee cake completely vegan, you can replace the honey with sugar. The general rule of the thumb for this is 1 1/4 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup of liquid (water or any liquid in your recipe) for a cup of honey.

The recipe below is the full recipe for original recipe without substitutions. My fellow bakers told me that half of the recipe below would make a yeasted coffee cake leaving enough brioche dough for a loaf. So I made just one quarter of the recipe below  to make one 8” Yeasted Plum Coffee Cake.

The Oatmeal Streusel Topping recipe given below is one I prefer to use. Please note that it makes enough Streusel Topping to generously cover one 8” coffee cake. Please see Judy’s recipe for the original recipe.

Yeasted Plum Coffee Cake

A hearty layered no knead yeasted coffee cake with layers filled with plum jam, and topped with oatmeal streusel topping.

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Course breads

Cuisine American

Ingredients

  

For the Brioche Dough :

• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
• 1 tbsp active dry yeast
• 1 tbsp salt
• 6 eggs lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup honey
• 75 gm unsalted butter melted
• 7 cups all-purpose flour

For the Blueberry Skillet Jam

• 5 cups fresh or frozen wild blueberries or 6 cups regular blueberries
• 1 cup sugar
• juice of 1/2 lemon

For the Oatmeal Streusel Topping

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup old fashioned rolled oats
• 3 tbsps light brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
• pinch Aof salt
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsps oil

Instructions

 

Make the Brioche Dough :

• Mix the water, yeast, salt, honey, and melted oil in a large bowl. There should be enough space above the dough for it to rise in the refrigerator.
• Mix in the flour without kneading, using a spoon, dough whisk, or a stand mixer (with paddle). The dough will be loose but will firm up when chilled. Do not try to work with it before chilling.
• Cover the bowl loosely and allow to rest at room temperature for 2 hours. Then refrigerate for at least 3 hours. The dough can be used as soon as it is thoroughly chilled. Refrigerate the container and use over the next 5 days.
• The recipe can be halved. Even a half recipe will provide enough dough for two separate bakes. I quartered the recipe. If your dough is too hard, let it sit at room temperature for a little while till it is manageable. If you leave it too long it will become too soft to work with.

Make the Skillet Jam :

• Cook the berries, sugar and lemon juice until the fruit juices are thick enough that you can run the spoon across the bottom of the skillet or pan and it doesn’t immediately fill in. It should be the consistency of honey.
• You are welcome to experiment with other fruits. This can be made ahead.

For the Oatmeal Streusel Topping :

• In a bowl mix together all the ingredients with your fingers till crumbly, adding the oil last. Keep aside. You can also make this while the dough is rising.

Assembling the Coffee Cake :

• If you’re making a quarter of the recipe, divide the dough into three equal portions.
• If using half the recipe, first take 16 ounces of dough (about 450gm or 2 cups approximately) for a 9” spring form pan. You can use 12 ounces (about 350gm or 1 1/2 cups approximately), for an 8” spring form pan.
• Divide the dough into 3 pieces, shape them into balls and then roll out into disks that will fit comfortably into your spring form pan. I used an 8” spring form pan. It’s okay if the edges go up slightly on the sides.
• Lay one of the disks into the pan. Cover with 1/3 of the jam, spreading out, but not quite to the edges. Repeat this with the remaining two disks of dough and jam.
• Loosely cover the pan and allow to rest for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours, depending on the warmth of the kitchen. It should look a bit puffy.
• Add the streusel to the pan just before baking, otherwise it will get soggy from the jam. Just scatter it over the top, so it is still in pieces, don’t press it down.
• Bake the coffee cake at 180C (350F) for about 45 minutes. Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing the sides of the pan.
• Let cool for 20 minutes before cutting to allow the bread layers to set or cool longer and serve room temperature.

The Bread Baking Babes are –

Bake My Day – Karen

Bread Baking Babe Bibliothécaire – Katie

Blog from OUR kitchen – Elizabeth

Feeding my enthusiasms – Elle

Girlichef – Heather

Life’s A Feast – Jamie

A Messy Kitchen – Kelly

Lucullian Delights – Ilva

My Kitchen In Half Cups – Tanna

Notitie Van Lien – Lien

Bread Experience – Cathy

Karen’s Kitchen Stories – Karen

Judy’s Gross Eats – Judy

The Bread Baking Babes (BBB) is a closed group, but you’re most welcome to bake with us as a Bread Baking Buddy. Here’s how it works.

Bake this month’s bread using Judy’s recipe and post it on your blog before the 28th of this month. Mention the Bread Baking Babes and link to her BBB post in your own post. Then e-mail her with your name and the link to the post, or leave a comment on her blog post with this information. She will include your bread in the Buddy round-up for this month on her blog.