I don't have a lot of experience making New York Style Crumb Cake, but I can recall having eaten some that was very, very good. It had a soft and velvety crumb along with sweet and slightly salty topping. To try to recreate the one in my memory, I made the Cook's Illustrated version. Unfortunately I was out of dark brown sugar and had to use light. I also used yogurt instead of buttermilk. The results were great, but I need to make the recipe again at some point. This is the one and only picture I took. Will update soon!
Recipe
New York Style Crumb Cake
Soft and velvety crumb cake with a dark brown sugar topping.
Equipment
- Stand mixer with paddle
Ingredients
Crumb Topping
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter (114 grams)
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar (70 grams)
- ⅓ cup dark brown sugar (70 grams)
- ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 1 ¾ cups cake flour (200 grams_
Cake
- 1 ¼ cups cake flour (130 grams)
- ½ cup granulated sugar (100 grams)
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter ¾ stick, cut into pieces (170 grams)
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅓ cup buttermilk
- Confectioners' sugar for dusting
Instructions
- In a 3 quart saucepan, gently melt the butter. Remove from heat. Add both sugars, salt and cinnamon and stir until blended. Add the flour and stir to make a soft, thick, brown dough. Set it aside to cool to room temperature while you make the cake batter.
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 8 inch square pan and line with parchment paper if desired.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
- With mixer running at low speed, add softened butter one piece at a time; beating on low until mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no visible butter chunks remaining, 1 to 2 minutes.
- Add egg, yolk, vanilla, and buttermilk and stir to mix. Increase mixer speed to medium high and beat until light and fluffy.
- Scrape batter into prepared pan.
- To assemble topping, break apart pieces of the dough in the saucepan so that you have pea sized chunks. Spread in even layer over batter, beginning with edges and then working toward center. Bake until crumbs are golden and wooden skewer inserted into center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes.
- Cool on wire rack at least 30 minutes. Before serving, dust with confectioners sugar. You can serve from the pan or if you used parchment, you can remove from the pan.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Sarah says
I just made this crumb cake. Oh my gosh, it is fabulous! I really love all of your recipes. Thank you so much.
Anna says
Hi Lindsay,
Sorry the crumbs took over. I know you said you followed the recipe to the letter, but could you have used a 9 inch pan rather than an 8 inch? That's the only thing I can think of that would have caused the cake part to be too thin. Then again, it is supposed to be kind of thin. I do remember this cake having a high proportion of crumb topping.
Lindsay says
I made this recipe on Saturday but somehow the cake swallowed all the crumbs! I'm not sure what happened but I had followed this recipe to the letter. I am thinking maybe I need to make more of the crumbs? Any idea's?
Anita says
I was wondering how I can get your recipe for the ny stryle crumb cake
kitty62 says
Made this cake yesterday.......and it didnt make it through the night. 🙂 Need i say more?! The only problem (if you want to call it that) i ran into was the fact that i used salted butter. DONT. For me, it was too salty. Personally I prefer the crumb to be sugary tasting. Other than that, if you like crumb cake.....double the recipe and maybe you will get a day or two out of it....hahaha
Vanessa says
I watched the Cooks Illustrasted pod cast. Then I was off to make the cake. I took it to a work holiday lunch. Work people enjoyed it, but they will eat anything. My favorite compliment was the woman who mentioned it tasted just like Entenmann's.
Thanks for the encouragement! I never would have tried this if I hadn't watched the podcast.
carole says
I made this this morning and it is one beautiful cake. Like you I used light brown sugar but I used European butter.
Amy says
I get the magazine, and I wanted to make this when I saw the article. I'm just afraid I'd eat the whole thing 🙁
Anna says
Lauren, sorry you have to work on Sunday. I am glad you like the banana cake.
Debbi, I'd buy some cake flour for this one. Cake flour has less protein which means it will form less gluten when beaten. Gluten, a matrix of proteins, make cakes/breads chewier/tougher. Now cornstarch doesn't have protein, so using the cornstarch trick would reduced the overall protein count and the trick MIGHT help. However, I would first try it with cake flour. The texture was so wonderful.
Randi, does that mean you have lunch with Christopher Kimball on a regular basis 😉 ?
Poutine says
I tested this recipe before it was published, I'm a friends of cook's. LOL. We're making this recipe at work for Mothers day brunch.
Debbi says
It calls for cake flour. In a previous post, you gave the recipe for adding cornstarch to all purpose to make cake flour. Would that work here??? or do you still recommend cake flour?
Lauren says
Mmmm ... that looks so good. I'm sitting at my desk at work (yes, I work Sundays, boooooo. Silly Law students, they don't need their library open on Sundays!) and my stomach is already growling but it's not my lunch yet and for some reason I didn't bring myself enough snacks today. I did bring my version of your banana cake (only difference being that I threw coconut in it) to share with my coworkers, but I've already eaten two pieces and I'm still hungry!