My Gingerbread Crumb Cake recipe is a warm spiced coffee cake made super moist and tender with molasses and sour cream ~ it’s the perfect way to start a chilly morning, or treat your overnight guests during the holidays!
Gingerbread crumb cake makes breakfast feel like a holiday
Some mornings toast and eggs just don’t cut it, you know what I’m talking about. This gingerbread crumb cake is perfect for those times. It’s warm, fluffy, and fragrant with spices like ginger, nutmeg and cloves. Eat it in your bathrobe and slippers with a cup of coffee, set it out on a brunch table, or wrap up a piece and take it to go. This is a versatile little cake that’ll have your back all season long.
My special crumb cake technique
The technique for this cake is a little bit out of the ordinary, it’s the same one I used for my Cardamom Crumb Cake, and my Pumpkin Crumb Cake ~
- I blitz the dry ingredients in my food processor to blend all those spices with the flour, etc.
- Then I pulse in the butter to make a crumbly mixture — a little bit of that is set aside for the crumb topping.
- The rest is folded into a dreamy blend of apple butter/sour cream/eggs and molasses. Are you swooning yet?
TIP: This gingerbread crumb cake is fabulous warm from the oven, so if you’d like to do some of the work ahead, I suggest making the recipe up to the stage just before you mix the wet ingredients into the dry. Do that when you’re ready to bake.
As crumb cakes go, this one is lighter on the crumbs, and moister in the base than most classic New York style cakes. I highly recommend it warm from the oven.
TIP: A good set of cake pans is essential if you like to bake. I particularly love the heft and sturdiness of aluminized steel USA bakeware, it bakes evenly for me every time and it’s reasonably priced.
To reheat this breakfast cake
- Wrap the cake with foil or plastic after it has cooled so it won’t dry out. You can reheat it is VERY briefly in a microwave, start with 15 seconds.
Gingerbread Crumb Cake
Ingredients
dry ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 Tbsp powdered ginger
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp allspice
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
butter
- 10 ounces unsalted butter, cold and cut in pieces
wet ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup apple butter
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 1/2 cup sour cream
Instructions
- Set oven to 350°F.
- Lightly spray a 9x13 baking pan.
- Put all the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor fitting with the blade attachment. Pulse to combine everything thoroughly.
- Pulse in the butter until it is well distributed and the mixture is crumbly, 30-40 pulses.
- Pour the dry mixture into a large mixing bowl. REMOVE one cup of the mixture and set it aside.
- Whisk together the eggs, apple butter, molasses, and sour cream until smooth.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry, folding just until everything is thoroughly mixed. Don't over mix.
- Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan. Sprinkle the reserved crumbs evenly over the top. Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out without wet batter clinging to it. The baking time will vary depending on your pan and your oven.
- Let cool slightly before cutting.
Nutrition
Tasty recipe! I have made many of your recipes and have enjoyed them all. I am an experienced baker and I was skeptical that this method with chunks of cold butter in a cake would work. But amazingly it did! I made homemade apple butter following your recipe. My cake was done at 46 minutes. But I will check in at 44 minutes next time. I did add a vanilla spiced glaze. It was a big hit with my cast mates at play rehearsal. They loved it!
Can you make muffins with the recipe?
I haven’t tried that, but it should work.
I made this using pumpkin butter instead of apple butter, since that’s what I had on hand. It turned out absolutely scrumptious; I brought it to work for a holiday brunch potluck. Thanks for the great recipe.
That sounds really good Court.
I just made the gingerbread crumb cake this evening! It tastes absolutely delicious! This is a wonderful recipe! I am planning to measure the dry ingredients in a gallon size Ziploc bag to make another cake in the near future as part of a Christmas gift! Thank you so much for sharing this recipe! I can not wait to try some of your other recipes!
I’m glad you liked it Heidi, and I love the idea of measuring out the dry ingredients, I think that’s so smart.
Sue,
I so want to add this to my crumb cake collection of recipes. Can I make it without a food processor? We don’t own one…but this recipe sounds delish!
Yes absolutely, you can cut in the butter with a pastry cutter, like you would do for a pie crust. The processor makes it a lot easier to get the butter into small bits while making sure it doesn’t get too soft, but you can do it by hand.
Yum! Gingerbread anything makes me smile even just thinking about it! 😀
This looks soooo fluffy! Perfect with a cuppa ^ ^