Berry Filled Coffee Cake

After finding this recipe on Coleen's Recipes, ogling over the pictures, and then reading about how this was the BEST coffee cake they'd had in over TEN YEARS, I knew that this was a recipe we didn't want to skip! My sister and daughter made it one morning while my husband was out of town and it was so perfectly moist and heavenly with the luscious fruit filling that we easily ate it all in one sitting. Then a couple weeks later, while organizing and tagging all my photos my husband caught a glimpse of this picture and started drooling on the spot. He couldn't believe we made something so yummy looking while he was out of town and begged me to make it again soon. The second time we made two of them, to share with guests we had in town and the guests were just as enamored with it as we were! Thanks Coleen!

CLICK HERE FOR PRINTABLE RECIPE

The ingredients:

FRUIT FILLING:

12 ounces of frozen raspberries(I used blueberries and Coleen used finely chopped strawberries)

1/4 cup sugar

1 Tbs. cornstarch

CAKE BATTER:

2-1/4 cups flour (I used part whole-wheat)

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cups COLD butter, sliced into thin pats

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/8 tsp. salt

1 egg

3/4 cup buttermilk (no substitutions)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

For the fruit filling, heat the fruit, sugar, and cornstarch together over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick and bubbling. Remove from heat and set aside while preparing the batter.

For the batter, mix flour, sugar, and butter together with a pastry blender until you have fine crumbs. Remove 1/2 cup of the fine crumbs and set aside for later. To the remaining crumbs add the baking powder, soda, salt, egg, buttermilk, and vanilla, mixing just until batter is moist (do not over-mix).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a 10-inch tart pan (I used a 10-inch springform pan instead). Using your fingers, press 2/3 of the batter into the prepared pan, pushing the batter evenly across the bottom and one inch up the sides of the pan (flouring your fingertips will help here).

Once you have the batter spread out and pushed up on the edges, gently pour in the fruit filling and spread it around the bottom. With the remaining 1/3 of the batter, place small teaspoon size pieces of batter in an irregular pattern on top of the fruit. I used my fingers to gently spread the batter around more evenly, but it's very important to be careful not to push the batter down into the fruit. You want it "floating" on top of the filling as much as possible.

Finally, sprinkle the reserved crumbs over everything. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30-35 minutes.

Enjoy!