Coffee Cake

This is one of our special sweet treats.  It uses a bit of maple syrup granules (dried maple syrup) which is very sweet and thus I use it sparingly.  It is a good substitute when you need a dry sugar to make a cinnamon/sugar mixture.  I like to have this coffee cake for breakfast on special days with some breakfast sausage.  This year, I plan to have it for my birthday breakfast.

Ingredients:

2 cups soft white wheat berries, grind to pastry (or 2 1/2 cups pastry flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp sea salt
1 stick sweet cream butter (cold)
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or homemade kefir
½ tsp baking soda
¼ cup pure maple syrup
1 Tbl maple syrup granules

Mix together the pastry flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sea salt.  Remove cold butter from refrigerator and cut into dry mixture.  You can do this in your food processor, but I do it by hand with my pastry tool.  Cut in butter until evenly dispersed and you have a uniform crumbly mixture.

 

Take out ½ cup of the crumbly mix and place in a separate small bowl.  Place 1 Tbl. of ground maple syrup granules in your flax coffee grinder and process.  Add to the 1/2 cup of crumbly mix and stir in well.  Reserve to sprinkle on top before baking.

In a separate bowl, mix together the homemade kefir (or buttermilk), baking soda and maple syrup.  Make a well in the center of the dry mixture (not the reserved crumbs for topping), and pour in liquid mixture.  Gently incorporate dry crumbs into liquid and stir to mix.  Do not over stir or you will make the batter tough.

Preheat oven to 350 °F.  Grease and flour an 8" x 8" glass pan with butter, and pour batter into pan.  The batter will be thick.  Sprinkle reserved crumbs on top and bake at 350 °F for 45 minutes or until center set.  Cool and enjoy.