Crater Cake aka Mom’s Coffee Cake

The other day my daughter was begging me to make coffee cake. In her sweetest voice she said please and told me I could even take pictures and put it on my blog. How can I say no to her when she asks so nicely and gives me a blogging idea, so of course I made her a coffee cake. Not just any coffee cake, my mom’s coffee cake, what my siblings and I called, crater cake.

Growing up every Sunday with dinner we had dessert. It was typically a white cake, sometimes a chocolate cake but every so often it was my mom’s coffee cake. I’m sure the recipe probably came from a cookbook, maybe Betty Crocker or Better Homes and Garden, i’m not really sure. It really didn’t matter to us kids, we all loved it. We loved all of the craters it had and we no longer called it coffee cake, it was simply crater crake. We would all beg for a piece full of craters, we just wanted the brown sugary goo. We would even eat all of the cake leaving the brown sugar goodness filled craters for last.

When I first got married over 17 years ago the recipe for crater cake was one of the ones I asked my mom for. I still have my original printout of the email with the recipe, complete with my AOL email address. I think I made it a couple times early in my marriage but then it got placed in my cookbook and sadly, kind of forgotten. That was until a year or two ago I made it for my kids and the legend of the crater cake was reborn.

Now my kids act just like my siblings and I did, everyone begging for the best piece. You know, the one with all the craters and brown sugary goodness. Really I can’t blame them, I still love crater cake. I just make it gluten free now.

I won’t say this cake is healthy, or even comes close to being healthy.  It definitely isn’t something that I make on a regular basis but it is something special my family loves. So, I bake it for them and remember how much I loved crater cake when I was their age!

What are some of your favorite food memories from your childhood?

Crater Cake aka Mom's Coffee Cake

 

Author:

My Hot Southern Mess

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Ingredients

• 1½ cups Gluten Free All purpose Flour
• ½ cup Sugar
• 3 teaspoons Baking Powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup oil (canola, vegetable,etc.)
• ½ cup milk
• TOPPING:
• ¾ cup Light Brown Sugar
• ¼ cup Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
• ¼ cup butter or margarine

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400' and grease a square (8x8) baking dish
2. Cream together sugar and oil. Mix in remaining wet ingredients; egg, vanilla and milk.
3. Add dry ingredients and combine well. Pour batter into greased 8x8 square dish.
4. In a small bowl combine brown sugar and flour and cut in butter until topping mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle on top of cake batter mixture.
5. Bake 30 minutes or until done.
6. Allow to cool before serving.

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