Thursday, July 28, 2011

Butterscotch Spiral Coffee Cake

This has been the craziest, busiest, and hottest summer in quite some time. I've been baking, yes ....thank the air-conditioner gods. In addition I had the opportunity to do a fun, creative, eatible project for a family member that I will reveal soon.

For now on to this months late posting of the ABC Bakers project, Butterscotch Spiral Coffee Cake from Flo Brakers book "Baking for All Occassions". I'd never pass up an opportunity to bake a yeasted coffee cake so when this came up I was all over it! That is until the time came to post, well that was a few weeks ago...(head hanging with sad face). Enough of that you get my message.

This yeasted cake recipe called for the usual round up of flour, sugar, salt, yeast, some warm spices like: cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. Also in attendence was milk, butter, eggs, and vanilla. Flo warned us that the dough would be sticky and boy she wasn't kidding. I'm not sure if I did this right but, I had to add much more flour than I expected. This really toppled my confidence but kept going.

At this point a butterscotch glaze is prepared with brown sugar, butter, and corn syrup.  It is poured into the prepared pan. After the suggested rising time the dough is rolled out, spread with a cinnamon/butter filling then cut into strips. The strips are coiled around the pan. It is covered and left to rise again. Bake in a 350 degree oven. I took heed of our fearless leader, Haana's advise and was careful not to over bake. After a short cooling off period the pan is flipped and presto!

Now I'd like to say this was just wonderful but I cannot tell a lie. I didn't find the cake to be very tasty, or yeast-like flaky. However, in all fairness it could have easily been my fault with all that extra flour. The glaze was delicious as was the cinnamon-butter spread. I wouldn't mind trying this again but, I would probably make more changes to make it more interesting. If you try this recipe and get better results let me know.