Walnut Coffee Cake

It's Friday night, and I have the urge to bake something. I decided to bake the Walnut Coffee Cake from Cooklight, and see how it compares to the Ina Garten's Sour Cream Coffee Cake. Both recipes use more or less the same ingredients. Except than the Cookinglight's version used buttermilk insteads of sour cream, and different sugar to flour proportion.

I want to make this for OCT's coming lab meeting, so I used a bundt pan; so that it will be more presentable than my usual square pan. As usual, the process of weighing, mixing and cutting was fun! And I was rewarded with a Walnut Coffee Cake in lesser than the expected time mentioned in the magazine!

See how unassuming the cake looks in the bundt pan....

After inverting it onto a large plate

I wonder how the interior looks, so I cut out 2 pieces, one for OCT and one for myself :)

See the brown sugar streak? Isn't this interesting?

As if this is not attractive enough, I quickly went into the kitchen and mix some powdered sugar + milk to give it a final touch.

ok, it looks much better now....

Nice eaten warm, we find this coffee cake tastes even nicer the next day. Having said this, I still prefer Ina Garten's Sour Cream Coffee Cake over this. Maybe because her version's sweeter and more tender. This coffee cake, however, offers a healthier alternative. It will be nice with a cup of coffee. I hope OCT's colleagues will like it.

Walnut Coffee Cake
(Adapted from Cookinglight April 2006)

3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 14 1/2 ounces)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
10 tablespoon butter, softened
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups nonfat buttermilk
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350°.
Combine brown sugar, walnuts, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Set aside.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk.

Combine sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium-high speed until well combined (about 3 minutes). Add eggs; beat 3 minutes or until combined. Beat in vanilla.

Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture, beating well after each addition and scraping sides of bowl. Spoon half of batter into a 10-inch Bundt pan coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle half of brown sugar mixture evenly over batter; spoon remaining half of batter into pan. Top with remaining brown sugar mixture.

Bake at 350° for 55 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.