Sour Cherry Coffee Cake

Foolin' Around in the Kitchen is officially two years old! Thanks to everyone who reads my little blog!

In celebration of my "blogiversary" and Valentine's Day, I made a Sour Cherry Coffee Cake from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. This recipe has several steps but turned out very tasty.

I mixed up the batter and poured half of it in the bottom of a greased angel food cake pan (or as Martha calls it- a tube pan.) Then I placed cherries on top of the batter so that none were touching the pan. The rest of the batter went on top of that.

Then I had to make the streusel topping which turned out to be a little more complicated than I anticipated. Martha only includes a recipe that will make 4 cups of streusel and I only wanted 1 cup, so I had to fourth everything. You all know how sometimes halving things can go badly in my kitchen, so I made sure to write everything down. I ended up with some eighths and sixteenths but all in all it went well.

I sprinkled the streusel on top (it seemed like way too much but I went with it) and then put it in the oven.

When it came out of the oven it was not done, so I let it go five more minutes and it still wasn't done, so I let it go four more minutes and it was good enough. I declared it done.

After cooling for 15 minutes I inverted it onto a cooling rack with a baking sheet underneath just as Martha prescribed. Martha's a smart lady. Probably half of the streusel came off when I plopped the cake upside down onto the cooling rack. Then I carefully turned it back over with my hands.

I couldn't let all that topping go to waste, so I tried to scoop it up and put it back on top.

When the cake was completely cool I mixed up some milk glaze (1 cup powdered sugar and 2 T milk) and drizzled it all over the cake.

The cake was very good! I was a little worried about those cherries being too tart, but the cake is so sweet that it balances it out. The cherry bites are my favorite.