Club Baked: New York Style Crumb Cake

I have never had NY style crumb cake, but seriously, how delicious. As it was baking, I was crossing my fingers that it would turn out because the smells coming from my oven were beyond good! Luckily, after waiting impatiently while it cooled, I took my first bite and it tasted even better than it smelled.

This crumb cake was a good first pick for Club: Baked as the steps were relatively easy and straight forward. I decided to make a full recipe in the recommended pan size (9" x 13") since some of the other bakers had problems when trying to halve the recipe. Being a newbie, I wanted to play it safe. And honestly, I have never had much of a problem finding people to eat desserts. Quite honestly, the hardest part was waiting the half hour prior to cutting as suggested by the authors.

The recipe itself also did not require many substitutions to accommodate my milk allergy. For this recipe, I did substitute strained sheep's milk yogurt for sour cream, but was able to use the rest of the ingredients as indicated.

The cake came together fairly quickly. I did take a break part way through to let the crumbles "rest" - a suggestion by the authors to produce "gargantuan" crumbles. During this time I also allowed the butter for the cake batter to soften and the yogurt to strain.

When substituting yogurt for sour cream in a recipe, place the yogurt in a metal strainer or cheese cloth suspended over a bowl. Allow it to drain to the desired consistency. For a sour cream substitute, I recommend a minimum of 30 minutes and a full hour if you can spare it. Also, always measure out an amount greater than what is needed so when it has drained, you end up with the amount required. For the 1 1/4 cup of sour cream required for this recipe, I started out with about 1 3/4 - 2 cups of yogurt.

Thanks to Karen of Karen's Cookies Cakes & More for hosting this week's recipe. To see what the other bakers did with this week's recipe, head on over here. I heard that someone made muffins - yum!