Danish Chocolate Streusel-Swirled Coffee Cake

I know my posts has been scarce of late but other events have been consuming my time the last couple of weeks, I’m so sorry for the lack of posts.

OK so I know the title of this post says ‘coffee cake’ but I wouldn’t call this a cake. Cakes don’t have yeast, bread does?!

This is the 10th bake over at The Home Bakers and once again I seem to always be the last one to bake and post 😉

The host for this bake is Anuja from Simple Baking. We all bake from the same book ‘Coffee Cakes’ by Lou Seibert Pappas. The rule with The Home Bakers is that only the host of the selected bake can state the recipe so please visit Anuja’s site for this delicious recipe here.

As a child I loved watching my mother make bread. The anticipation of seeing how much the dough would rise and then deflate when you punched it would always make my brother and I go ‘ooooohhhh!!’ and ‘ahhhh!’. Then we couldn’t wait to sink our teeth into the freshly baked bread. However making bread myself is a totally different story. I almost didn’t bake this as I am not a fan of baking bread, I am too impatient to wait for the dough to rise. But I have to admit I am glad I did as this Danish Chocolate Streusel-Swirled Cake/Bread bake was really delicious.

As you can see from the above pictures my dough did rise very nicely indeed. Childhood memories came flooding back and I was a little giddy when I saw that it had doubled in size. As it is autumn here in Austria I didn’t really have a warm spot in my apartment for the dough to rise. The day I baked this it was a cold cloudy day therefore no sunny spots. So what I did was I preheated the oven at a low temperature before I started and then I turned the oven off once the dough was ready to rest and rise. I covered the dough with a wet tea towel and left it in the oven for the stated time and ‘whoala’!

My dough was very elasticky so I found it different to roll out. Hence my lack of swirls as I couldn’t roll the dough out large enough to get more rolls in between. As you can see I tried to make individual breads but I lost patience and sufficed with making a large one which I was glad I did as the larger streusel tasted better than the individual ones.

As I was pulling, twisting and shaping the cut pieces I thought ‘OMG! I’m making such a mess of this, not sure how this is going to turn out’ but as you can see from the above & below pictures, once it doubles in size it shapes out and moulds together quite beautifully.

Here are some before and after shots. I ran out of eggs so I couldn’t brush the streusel with egg white to give it that glossy look, instead I brushed it with milk.

After shaping the dough there is more waiting for it to double in size again before baking. So you see what I mean by having to wait and wait and wait.

FINALLY!!! The baked streusel. The large streusel loaf tore apart easily from where the cuts & twists were made to reveal the sweet chocolate streusel.

I was worried the streusel would be hard as I needed to use more flour than stated in the recipe. But all that kneading and waiting paid off in the end with a very light, airy, moist and fluffy reward.

This streusel was best eaten fresh out of the oven. I only made half the recipe and as you can see it was quite a lot. This loaf lasted my husband and I the whole week for breakfast. It stored well in the fridge wrapped in plastic wrap and I just warmed a slice each morning in the oven and with a cup of coffee, it kicked started our morning.

I am happy to say my first bread baking attempt was a success.

I am entering this into the November 2012 Calendar Cakes challenge hosted each month by Dolly Bakes and Laura Love Cakes.

I’m also submitting this to the AlphaBakes Challenge hosted by Caroline Makes and assisting alongside her The More than Occasional Baker.

The letter for January 2013 is ‘D’

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Category : Bread, Cakes
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