The Home Cook: Morning Coffee Cake

I'm lying. Let's just be clear, the picture...the one below...is.a.lie. The picture would have you believe that in some way shape or form real apples were involved with this recipe. They weren't, for our purposes consider them ornamentation. I just wanted us all to be on the same page, thank-you.

I am sure that the internet has a perfectly wonderful recipe for real fruit coffee cake. I'm sure because I have at least 12 sites bookmarked that all probably have awe-inspiring, faith changing, life altering versions of the same theme. There are probably recipes so very good that you'll want to name your first born after the person who blogged about it. This isn't that recipe. THIS recipe won't change your life and it probably won't get any children named after you. But (and here we go with that old pesky "but") this recipe's got a dirty little secret, an ace in the hole if you will, THIS recipe is good because it's fast and stupid simple. And by fast and stupid simple I mean you can wake up at 6am and have a warm coffee cake by 7:15. I like that. Mostly I like that because at 6am I'm lazy and not motivated to core, peel and slice apples for one of those recipes. Quite frankly, I'm counting on you to be impressed with this recipe for the same reason.

There are those who would scoff at a recipe that uses pie filling. "Pie filling? How lazy ARE you?!?", they say. As my Grandma would say, "pshaw". I'm inclined to agree with her, I'm sure there are lots of us who'd rather catch a few more ZZZ's on a Sunday morning and still have a nice morning breakfast...especially if you have a house load of guests that kept everyone up the night before. For those occasions this recipe will become your best friend. Seriously. Of course this recipe could also be used to bribe co-workers with warm from the oven cake. But I've certainly never ever done that. I've also certainly never told them my recipe, my little secret wouldn't be nearly as impressive then.

Morning Coffee Cake

4 Eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup Oil (up to half can be substituted with applesauce)

1 cup Granulated Sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla

2 cups Flour

1 Tablespoon Baking Powder

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1 can Fruit Pie Filling, any kind

Granulated sugar

Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9" x 13" x 2" cake pan.

Cream together eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt by hand; mixing until the batter is well blended.

Pour half of the batter into the pan, using a spatula to make sure the bottom is evenly covered. Spoon the pie filling on to the batter, leaving a small area (about silver dollar sized) in the center uncovered by the filling. Spoon the remaining batter over the top. Sprinkle the top with sugar and cinnamon.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the cake passes the toothpick test. The top should be lightly golden.

Cook's Notes:

I've used all sorts of pie filling, my only recommendation is that for the softer fruits (pear, peach, strawberry and some cheaper brands of blueberry) 1) do the applesauce substitution and 2) when spooning out the filling leave a few tablespoons of the thickened filling syrup out of the cake. This helps keep things from baking too slowly in the center. I've never had any problems with apple or cherry filling of any brand.

Also, for some reason this cake has always baked better for me in a NON-air bake cake pan. Dunno what that's about, but whatever makes the cake happy I guess.

This recipe is good the day it's baked and the day after, any longer and it starts to get a bit soggy so bake it up and eat it fast.