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!

March Meal Plan



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A little late, please forgive me. I just didn't want to interrupt those fabulous ladies last week. I hope you all enjoyed them and had fun visiting their blogs.

This month was a bit tricky! It's Lent! So, I switched around my normal categories so that Friday was now a Meatless Meal. Like usual, we end up with bits and pieces from other meals that we need to use up, so those will get used in the OPEN days. Nick was away for a few days also, and with some leftovers in the fridge, I was happy to have those days OPEN as well, so that's why it looked like I was a lazy cook Week 1.

I'm already happily planning next month because guess what showed up at my doorstep?! Presents! (Even though I ordered them, I will continue to call them presents since I bought them with a gift card. :-p)

I was so excited to get these. I had already purchased the samples on my kindle (and even tried a few recipes), so I was so excited to get the real deal.

In general, I have mixed feelings about cookbooks. With so many recipes from highly acclaimed chefs available on the internet, along with a host of blogs with even more recipes for free, I'm hard pressed to find the need for cookbooks. I have several, but they tend to hang out on a shelf as dust collectors the majority of the time.

But as I've gotten more experience in the kitchen, I've asked my cookbooks to do more than I originally intended. As I'm sure it is with most new cooks, I started out (in college) with a basic recipe book (Better Homes & Gardens) and a few others by some of my favorite TV chefs. I have used them, and still make some of the recipes (by now, memorized). Now, this time I wanted cookbooks that I could continue to learn from as well as keep me pursuing in my newest cooking categories (ice cream making and baking in particular).

I recently read Julia's Kitchen Wisdom and really enjoyed the set up of the book. While it is a bit hard to follow the recipes as it is really written like a novel, she gives many variations on a Master Recipe, essentially instructing you on the basics while also giving you the leeway to come up with your own variation.

It was the type I was looking for. I realized that the books I had, while the recipes were good, didn't really teach me much but to make that exact recipe. I like the idea of learning the basic recipe and then learning how to vary that recipe. That's essentially how you learn to cook anyway. So, I ordered some samples on my kindle (I just love that feature) and made a few recipes and ordered the books.

Which just dropped in on my doorstep, so you'll have to wait for a full review of these as I make more recipes, but from what I've made so far, these are keepers.

What are some of your favorite cookbooks? Have you started meal planning? If so, how's it going?