By Sarah Condley

I don’t know what I was doing on the Internet at the time I stumbled upon this recipe at lecremedelacrumb.com.

I like coffee cakes and this sounded like something I could make the next time it was my turn to take breakfast to our Sunday School class.

When my turn rolled around, I pulled this recipe out and having all the ingredients, I was set to prepare it. I made this coffee cake Saturday night because I was also going to make a quiche for our Sunday School breakfast and didn’t want to be doing two things at once — that usually spells disaster for those Sunday morning cook-and-get-to-church days.

The author of the recipe said sour cream makes this coffee cake super moist and that the best part was that it started with a cake mix. The person also mentioned it is a crowd pleaser. This was just the recipe I needed.

The recipe says to spray the baking dish with cooking spray, but I really don’t like cooking spray on my pottery. If the spray splatters anywhere but where the food is going to be, it seems to make a sticky brown mess on the pottery that’s hard to get off. So, I just greased the dish with shortening.

I did as the recipe said and put the crumble together first. One teaspoon of cinnamon didn’t seem like enough to me, so I upped it to three teaspoons.

The cold butter made it hard to combine, so I let the mixture sit while the butter softened a bit. After about 30 minutes, it was easier to get all of those ingredients combined.

Then I got to work making the cake batter. I melted the butter in a medium-sized bowl and then added all of the other ingredients.

I added the egg last so the hot melted butter wouldn’t begin to cook it. I stirred it up and true to the recipe, the batter was very thick.

I put about half of the batter into my baking dish and then decided I’m too impatient and didn’t have enough finesse to deal with layering the crumble mixture with the batter.

I just scraped the rest of the batter into the pan, spread it and then sprinkled all of the crumble mixture on top. Boy, was that a lot of crumble!

I put the cake in the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes. Of course when the timer dinged, the toothpick didn’t come out clean and I ended up baking the cake another 15 minutes.

The cake smelled great and I left it on the counter to cool.

Sunday morning arrived and I sliced the cake and slipped a piece out to try before heading to church. Brad loves cinnamon and I asked him if he wanted to try the coffee cake, but he passed.

I warmed my little piece in the microwave and thought it tasted pretty good; again I thought “that’s a lot of crumble topping.”

At church I let my classmates know I needed their opinions about this coffee cake and got nice compliments and thumbs up.

We didn’t have a full class in Sunday School that morning so there were several pieces of the cake left over.

When we got home and before I started fixing lunch, Brad decided to take a taste of the cake. He loved it. He said, “You need to get rid of this before I eat it all.”

So with everyone’s blessing, especially Brad’s, I nailed this recipe and it has been added to my self-made cookbook.

Nobody complained about or mentioned there was too much crumble on top.

This just might be on the table Christmas morning.

Cake Mix Sour Cream Coffee Cake

— 1 package yellow cake mix (mix only – not prepared)

— 1 egg

— 1 cup sour cream (may sub plain greek yogurt

— 1/4 cup butter, melted

— 1 teaspoon vanilla

Crumb Topping

— 1-1/4 cups flour

— 2/3 cup brown sugar

— 1/2 cup granulated sugar

— 1/2 teaspoon salt

— 1 teaspoon cinnamon

— 1/2 cup butter (8 tablespoons), chilled and cut into cubes

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9×13 inch baking dish with cooking spray.

First prepare the crumble. Whisk together flour, brown sugar, sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Cut in chilled butter until crumbly. Set aside.

Next prepare the cake. Combine cake mix, egg, sour cream, melted butter, and vanilla and mix until combined. It’s okay if the batter still has some lumps.

Spread half the cake batter in the bottom of the greased baking dish. Sprinkle with half of the crumble mixture. Grease a rubber spatula and gently spread the remaining batter over the crumble (this take a little finessing but it’s worth it if you just work with it — see note). Top with remaining crumble.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Serve warm.

Note: If you don’t want to worry about working with the batter (which is thick) to make the layers, you can spread all of the batter in the pan, then top with all of the crumble and bake as directed.

Sarah Condley is an amateur baker and chef who is compiling a cookbook of her favorite recipes.