Morning Glory Cake

Morning Glory Cake is aptly named, everybody loves this classic coffee cake ~ it’s a cross between a spice cake and a hummingbird cake ~ delish!

For me, this morning marks the official start of fall.  Until now, I hadn’t quite gotten that ‘feeling’, but this morning, it hit me the minute I stepped out the door.  I’ve been talking about fall for weeks now, but I’ve been faking it.  Fall doesn’t really arrive until you feel it in your bones.  It’s not a temperature, or a date, or even the color on the trees.  This morning wasn’t even particularly cool.  It was 55 on the car thermometer.  But it’s blustery.  And the light has a golden yellow cast, and flickers through the new chinks in the foliage.  I love it.

Years ago my kids came back from one of their summer day camps clutching little spiral bound cookbooks full of recipes of the things they had learned to cook that summer. One of the recipes was Morning Glory Muffins, and it made a big impression on them.  We kept the books, but rarely looked at them after that summer passed.  To this day one daughter or other will mention these muffins out of the blue, and reminisce about how wonderful they were.  Since my oldest daughter is coming up for the weekend I thought it would be fun to surprise her with this cake version of those muffins.

Morning Glory muffins are a bit of an effort.  Like carrot cake, they contain everything but the kitchen sink, and you probably won’t have everything you need already in the house, so they usually require a trip to the store.  My recipe is a mash-up between the summer camp version, the original recipe, which was published by Gourmet in 1981, and my own changes.  This is one of those recipes where more is better, as long as your ingredients are fresh.  The original Morning Glories are muffins, but I’m going for a cake.  It’s perfect for the first day of fall.

The muffins would traditionally be made with raisins.  I think just about any other dried fruit is better than raisins, so I used dried cranberries.  IMO they have more flavor, prettier color, and they amp up the fall spirit in this cake.
I’ve discovered that when I substitute oat flour for some of the regular flour in sweet breads, cakes, and muffins, they get lighter and fluffier.  So I’m doing it all the time now.  Fluffier is better.  You can use all regular flour if you want to.

OK, this cake does require a bit of prep, but once you have everything assembled it comes together super easily.  All your hard work will pay off; it will feed you for days, and actually gets better as it sits.  It’s a great breakfast cake…the best reason of all for making it.

I really want to take a huge slice of this cake right now, but it’s going to wait for my daughter to arrive, later today.  I’ll update!