You Pick Two Review: Panera Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake

A few days ago I tried Panera's new bakery item, a cinnamon crumb coffee cake. Panera's website describes the new confection as "an old-fashioned butter cream coffee cake, swirled with cinnamon and finished with a butter crumb topping."

The Boyfriend and I both found the coffee cake a little disappointing. The cake tasted too floury and lacked pizazz.

I tried my own version of a cinnamon crumb coffee cake and was very happy with the results. I combined a recipe for a cinnamon swirl bundt cake from allrecipes.com and a recipe for a crumb topping from the Pioneer Woman's cooking blog. The recipes in their original contexts can be found here and here.

My edited versions of the recipes appear below:

For the cake:

Ingredients

• 1 cup sour cream
• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup white sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease one 9 x 13 pan. [A 10 inch bundt pan would also work and would look prettier. I was concerned about my ability to flip the bundt pan after baking, so I used a 9 x 13 instead].
2. Cream 1 1/2 cups white sugar together with eggs until well blended. Add sour cream and butter or margarine and beat well. Add flour, baking soda, and baking powder and mix well. Stir in vanilla.
3. Mix the remaining 1/4 cup of white sugar with the cinnamon.
4. Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle generously with the cinnamon sugar mixture. Cover with remaining cake batter.
5. Bake at 350 F (205 degrees C) for 30 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean.
   

For the crumbs:
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, melted
1 1/2 cups flour

Directions:
To make crumbs in a large bowl, whisk sugars, spices and salt into melted butter until smooth. Then, add flour with a spatula or wooden spoon. It will look and feel like a solid dough. Leave it pressed together in the bottom of the bowl and set aside.

After making the cake, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. Sprinkle over cake before baking.