Raspberry Chocolate Coffee Cake

Alas, now that Alpha's over, I have no good reason to bake regularly. Well I could bake for no reason at all... But then I'd be the one stuck eating the dessert I make! Not so good for the waistline... =P So luckily my CG decided to have a special dessert night as the following day was a public holiday. Guess who immediately volunteered to bring something?! ;-)

Well since it's CG (and CG people are more forgiving than most people... Hehe...) I figured I should make something that I haven't tried before. That's when I stumbled across the pictures of a delicious looking coffee cake! Yum... the interesting thing is that coffee cake doesn't necessarily mean that it contains coffee... =) According to Wikipedia, the term coffee cake refers to a common cake or sweetbread. Go figure!

I'm not sure if it's because I used a silicon baking pan, but the coffee cake took at least an hour before it was actually done. The middle part was still "jiggly" when I checked it at the 45 minutes mark so it was obviously not ready. I ended up covering the top part of the cake to prevent it from burning and continued to bake it.  Strange... anyway I have a link to the original recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction and below is my slightly modified version.

The cake got rave reviews from my CG but I'm not completely satisfied with the results. The cake ended up being a bit denser than I like and it was bordering on being "rubbery" which probably means I mixed the batter too much. Argh... Anyway stay tuned as it's likely I'll revisit this recipe and revise it...

Ingredients:
Streusel:
43g unsalted butter, cold
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
57g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg
1 cup dark chocolate chips (or semi-sweet, milk chocolate, or white chocolate)
1 and 1/2 cups fresh or frozen (thawed) unsweetened raspberries

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F/176C. Grease 8 or 9-inch baking pan.
2. Prepare streusel by first mashing up cold butter with a fork.
3. Add flour and sugar to the butter and stir the mixture until it is crumbly.
4. Mix in the almonds and set aside.
5. For the cake, in a large bowl, add in flour, sugar, butter, milk, vanilla extract, baking powder, salt and egg. Using an electric mixer, beat on low power until everything is just combined. Don't over mix!
6. Pour half of the batter into the baking pan. Layer in half the streusel, most of the raspberries and chocolate chips. Pour the remaining batter into the baking pan and layer with the the rest of the streusel. Top with the rest of the raspberries and chocolate chips.
7. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until it's no longer "jiggly".