It Started in Bulgaria: Breakfast for Dinner Buffet: Raspberry Coffee Cake

My friend Amanda and I have started a tradition of Sunday night potlucks on campus. Someone hosts, sending out an invitation and a theme, and everyone brings something. It definitely helps assuage the Sunday evening it's-not-quite-still-the-weekend blues. This week Brett and I had the inspired idea of having a breakfast for dinner potluck.

I was going to make cinnamon buns, but we had an appointment to be interviewed for the Bulgarian national radio website at noon, which cut into my potential dough rising time, so I decided to try my first coffee cake instead. There are a LOT of coffee cake recipes out there. Apparently people like it a lot. Who knew?

So after some debate between vanilla, apple and raspberry, I decided it was time to defrost the block of raspberries Brett bought directly from a farm truck last fall. I chose a recipe to adapt from Confessions of a Tart, who apparently adapted it from Smitten Kitchen. Food blogs are so great.

Raspberry Coffee Cake

For the raspberry layer:

As Many raspberries as you have (I used a cup of thawed out berries. I think it would have been great with two cups.)

1/8 cup granulated sugar

For the crumbly layer:

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Sprinkle of salt

1/2 cup melted butter

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

For the cake layers:

1/3 cup yoghurt (I used 4.5 %)

1 egg + 1 yolk (don't let your first yolk slip down the drain like me!)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

6 tbsp butter, cut into 6-8 pieces

Preheat the oven to 325 and grease a 9 X 9 " pan.

1. If you're using thawed berries, pour them into a bowl and drain off some of the excess liquid. Mix in the sugar and let sit.

2. Combine the sugars, cinnamon and salt for the crumbly layer. Mix in the melted butter, then the flour. Set aside.

3. For the cake layers: in a small bowl, combine the eggs, yoghurt and vanilla. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

4. Add the butter pieces and a big spoon of the yoghurt mixture to the flour mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon, cutting the butter into the flour as you work, cutting/chopping/beating for thirty seconds or so. Then add the yoghurt mixture in two more installments, stirring hard for 20 seconds after each installment.

5. Pour most of the cake layer batter into the prepared pan, leaving about 1/2 cup in the bowl.

6. Spoon the raspberries over cake layer #1. Then dollop the remaining cake batter over them.

7. Spoon the crumbly mixture over the raspberries and bake. In my Bulgarian oven, it took about 60 minutes. Start checking yours at 45. A fork inserted in the middle should come out clean (except maybe for a bit of raspberry).

Hope you like it! EVERYONE at the potluck did.