Recipe Details
Community Pick: Double the Streusel Coffee Cake
Recipe photo by run for your life
Recipe Basics
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| Total Ready Time | 40 minutes |
| Servings | 12 |
| Total Core Ingredients | 12 |
Step-by-Step Baking Instructions
In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt, then stir in the granulated sugar to combine.
Mix ¼ cup of oil into the flour-sugar mixture until the texture resembles coarse cornmeal.
In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and vanilla extract until smooth.
Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients, and stir only until just combined — do not overmix.
Grease an 8-inch baking pan, then spread half of your batter evenly across the bottom of the pan.
Mix your streusel topping ingredients, then sprinkle half of the streusel evenly over the first batter layer.
Add the remaining batter on top of the streusel, then finish by sprinkling the second half of the streusel over the top.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 minutes.
For an extra sweet finish, drizzle with a thin powdered sugar icing before serving if desired.
Community Questions & Answers
Below are common questions from other bakers who’ve tested this recipe:
- Will this work with gluten-free flour?
One home baker who already loved the original all-flour version wanted to adapt it for gluten-sensitive friends. Most community members report success swapping all-purpose flour for a 1:1 gluten-free baking blend for this recipe.
- I’m out of brown sugar for the streusel — can I use white granulated sugar instead?
This baker first made this recipe years ago for a church snack, where it was a crowd favorite, but found themselves out of brown sugar during quarantine. Bakers agree that while you’ll miss the subtle caramel depth of brown sugar, the recipe will still turn out delicious with white sugar in a pinch.
- If I double the full recipe, do I need to add extra baking time?
Yes, most bakers recommend adding 15-20 minutes of baking time for a doubled recipe in a larger pan, and always checking doneness with a toothpick inserted into the center.
- Can I bake this as muffins in a large muffin tin?
Absolutely! This recipe adapts perfectly to coffee cake muffins — just reduce baking time to 18-22 minutes and check for doneness early.
Community Reviews
Fantastic recipe! I’ve been making this favorite for years, and I wanted to share how great it is. The base recipe is wonderful as written, but it’s also super easy to tweak for different preferences. A half white flour, half whole wheat swap works perfectly. I almost always double the recipe, and even though everyone fights over the brown sugar streusel, I don’t double the brown sugar amount and it still turns out great. So delicious!
I pulled this coffee cake out of the oven a couple hours ago, and it’s absolutely fantabulous. I added chopped pecans to the streusel, and made a 1.5x batch to fit a tube pan. I sprayed the pan with nonstick spray that already has flour in it. I layered it a little differently: I put a bit of streusel in the pan first, then batter, more streusel, the rest of the batter, then extra streusel on top (which ends up at the bottom after flipping the cake out). It baked for about 45 minutes at 325°F instead of 350°F, and came out perfectly. It’s not too sweet, and the pecans add such great texture. Yum yum.
This isn’t a bad recipe, but the original instructions left a little to be desired. They say to pour the batter into the pan, but the mixture is actually more of a thick dough than a pourable batter. That makes spreading the second layer over the streusel really tricky — you end up shifting and clumping the streusel as you press the dough into place. Everything else about the recipe works well, just a heads up for new bakers!
*I made this recipe on 6/8/11 for the “June Is Baked Goods Month” event in the Photo Forum. I followed the recipe exactly except I skipped the glaze. The bake time was right on the money. At first I thought the amount of streusel was going to be too much, but it ended up being perfect. The light sweetness of the cake blends perfectly with the streusel topping. I’ll definitely make this again. Thank you for sharing the recipe, and keep smiling :) *
This is a wonderful coffee cake recipe, exactly what I was looking for! I made it before church on Sunday, and my family devoured it while it was still warm after we got home. I skipped the icing too, and it was perfectly sweet without it. I’ll definitely make this again for my family.
See 37 more reviews on the original post
Popular Community Tweaks
Bakers love adapting this flexible base recipe, here are the most common successful adjustments:
Bake at 325°F instead of 350°F, add chopped pecans to the streusel, make a 1.5x batch to fit a tube pan, and add a layer of streusel at the bottom of the pan for extra streusel in every bite.
Add sour cream to the batter, swap oil for mashed banana, use half whole wheat flour instead of all white, and double the streusel to fill a bundt pan. Note that this adapted version typically takes ~45 minutes to bake fully.
Reduce the sugar in the cake base to ½ cup, swap half the white flour for whole wheat, skip the icing entirely, and it still satisfies a sweet tooth perfectly.
About The Recipe Contributor
This recipe was submitted by a long-time Zaar community member, who shared:
Hi! I’m very fortunate to be married to my best friend. My husband and I own our own business, and I work there 3-4 days a week. We have four children — one girl and three boys — all grown and out of the house now. Our daughter is Nolan'sMom here on Zaar, and our daughter-in-law is run for your life, the photographer for this recipe! We’re so blessed to have four little grandchildren: two grandsons, Nolan and Blake, and two granddaughters, Evangeline and Willow. All of us girls love testing recipes and sharing our results when we get together.
Some of my hobbies are jogging, biking, aerobics, reading, and of course testing new recipes here on Zaar. My husband and I love going on dates to our favorite restaurant, or just heading out for coffee together. I just got a new digital camera recently, and I’m still learning how to take good photos of the food I make — it’s more complicated than I thought it would be!