Cinnamon Crumble Cake

Reproduced from Joy Wilson 

I have no photo of this cake due to the fact that it got baked and eaten in a flurry of craziness that was a socialable post Christmas Friday. At Christmas you have to squeeze visitors and visits into your days stuffing your face with foodie delights along the way. Working over the holidays has seriously limited my social interaction but I was off Friday and managed to pop around to the cousins for dinner before dashing off for a more-civilised-than-our-usual-gatherings dinner with my friends. The fabulous host is more than capable of baking up a storm but I can never come empty handed to a party so I made this cake. When asked what is was I described it as an apple crumble, with sponge instead of apples. Yeah I have mad descriptive skills clearly....

If you love cinnamon you'll love this cake. Ripples of treacle-y cinnamon bursts through a moist sponge topped with crumble- delicious with tea and totally beautiful heated with ice cream or cream. I only made half of the crumble topping, finding that I had plenty. Don't skimp if your a crumble fan, I find it slightly drying. The cake mix could also easily be halved, I made a grill tray full of cake, around 38 x 28 cm.

From Joy of Baking by Joy Wilson

For the topping
4/5 cup of sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1/4 cup butter (56g)

For the filling
1 cup brown sugar
1.5 tblspoon cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
3 teaspoons cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt

For the cake
3/4 cup unsalted butter softened
1.5 cups sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
3 3/4 cups plain flour
1 1/4 salt
3/4 cup sour cream
1 1/4 milk


1. Make the topping. Rub the butter into the flour using your finger tips until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix with a fork. Set aside.
2. Make the filling by mixing all the ingredients together in a small bowl.
3. Heat the oven to 175oC. Sift flour in a big bowl and add the salt. Beat sugar and butter together until soft with an electric beater, around 4-5 minutes. Add the egg one at a time with a heaped tablespoon of the flour. Beat until all traces of egg is gone. Add the vanilla extract and beat briefly.
4. In a jug mix the sour cream and mix together. It will be lumpy but that's OK. Add 1/3 of the flour and 1/2 of the milk/sour cream at a time beating on slow. Add another third of flour and the other half of the wet ingredients. Continue with the rest of the flour mixing until only just incorporated.
5. Spread half the cake batter on a baking pan (Joy recommends 9 x 13 inches, it made slightly more for me). Sprinkle over the filling. Dollop the remaining batter over the filling. Use a knife to make just a few cuts marbling the cake. Smooth without bringing the filling to the surface as it will burn in the oven. Sprinkle over the crumble topping evenly.
6. Bake for 40-50 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.