My orange cardamom crumb cake is a New York style coffee cake bursting with fresh orange flavor and piled high with lightly spiced crumbs. Breakfast really doesn’t get much better.
orange cardamom crumb cake is an upgraded New York classic
Growing up in New York, crumb cake was a big part of my childhood culinary life, but it was always store-bought, never homemade. The cardboard bakery box was always on the counter, with a butter knife inside so anybody passing by could grab a slice. When I finally got around to making it myself I gained a whole new appreciation for this classic breakfast cake. There is nothing, but nothing, like pulling out a homemade crumb cake out of the oven. The anticipation is intense and I never seem to be able to wait for it to cool down before digging in.
what’s the origin of crumb cake?
German immigrants brought their love of baking, and crumb cake, to New York in the 1800s. (Streusel in German means to strew or scatter.) Over the years the crumble topping grew taller and taller, just like the skyscrapers of the city itself! And as any born and bred New Yorker will tell you, the crumbs are the best part 🙂
orange plus cardamom is a favorite Mediterranean combination
The warm cardamom spice speaks a little more softly than cinnamon, with a slightly exotic edge. The combination of citrus and cardamom is one of my favorites ~ I use it in these Orange and Cardamom Muffins. and these Moroccan Meatballs with Cardamom and Lemon.
I infuse fresh orange into this coffee cake with my special orange sugar technique.
If you’ve never tried this method for adding citrus flavor to baked goods, now is a good time to get to know it:
I process the sugar for the cake with the rind of one orange. The result is a vibrant orange sugar that permeates this cake with a true orange flavor. All you need is the rind, which is where all the essential oils hang out. Juice the rest of your orange to drink with your cake! Get the details in the recipe below, and if you want to know more about this process, check out my How to Make Lemon Sugar post.
where does the cardamom come in?
I add ground cardamom to the crumble topping. This allows the orange to take center stage in the cake so when you take a bite you get a burst of orange followed by a hint of cardamom. It’s a pretty sophisticated flavor profile for a coffee cake, and it’s pretty fabulous with a cup of coffee.
how is cardamom different from cinnamon?
Cardamom and cinnamon do not, actually, taste alike at all, but they can be successfully substituted for one another, especially in baked goods. Cardamom is soft and aromatic whereas cinnamon can be quite strident and intense. They both have vaguely ‘peppery’ flavors, but cardamom is more subtle, and lingering. It’s very hard to describe a unique flavor in words…you just have to try it.
crumb cake FAQS
That’s right, in a German Streuselkuchen there’s more real estate devoted to the boulder-sized crumbs than there is to the actual cake itself, and that’s exactly as it should be. But maybe you don’t live in the crumb cake zone (New York to the Mid-Atlantic) and you have no idea what I’m talking about. But trust me, the cake is just an excuse for the crumbs.
The crumbs on a crumb cake are a mixture of flour, butter, and sugar, mixed together with your fingertips until they resemble large, pale brown rubble.
The original crumb cake made by Central European immigrants in New York was a yeasted recipe. I prefer this cake based version because the cake is soft and moist, and much more user friendly.
You can use cinnamon, or even ground ginger. You can leave the spice out altogether and just go with vanilla or almond flavoring.
Because the cake is a thin and ‘lean’ cake, meaning there isn’t much fat in the cake layer, it’s best eaten within a day or two of baking. Absolutely best the same day, natch.
Yes, let it cool completely, then wrap well in plastic, then in foil. I’d use it within 3 months for best quality.
more dessert for breakfast
- Best Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Scone Recipe
- Apple Cider Doughnut Loaf Cake
- Glazed Old Fashioned Buttermilk Doughnut Bundt Cake
- Cranberry Breakfast Cake!
- Breakfast Fruit Crisp
Orange Cardamom Crumb Cake
Equipment
- quarter sheet pan (9 x 12 1/2) Buy on Amazon here
Ingredients
crumbs
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
- 2 tsp ground cardamom
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted and sightly cooled
cake wet ingredients
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- peeled zest of 1 navel orange
- 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
cake dry ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
for dusting
- confectioner's sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325F. Spray and flour a quarter sheet pan (9 x 12 1/2)
- To make the crumb topping put the flour, sugar, and cardamom in a bowl. Add the melted butter and stir briefly with a spatula, then go in with your hands and toss the mixture together until everything is evenly moistened and you get large crumbs. Break any big chunks apart with your fingers as you toss. Once it is all evenly combined, set aside.
- Put the sugar and orange zest in a food processor and process until the zest is completely incorporated and the sugar is moist and orange. Pulse the machine to make sure there are no chunks of zest left.
- Put the orange sugar, oil, egg, milk, and extract in a bowl and whisk together.
- In another bowl whisk together the 1 1/2 cups flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Add the dry mixture to the wet and blend gently with a spatula.
- Spread the batter into your prepared pan. It will be a thin layer, but spread out as evenly as you can.
- Top the batter with the crumbs, breaking up any large crumbs with your fingers. Be sure to get them evenly scattered, and don't forget all the edges and corners. You don't want a big mound in the middle.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Rotate the pan halfway through cooking.
- Let the cake cool on a rack for 15 minutes, then dust with powdered sugar. Enjoy warm, or at room temperature. This crumb cake is best the day it is made, but will keep on the counter, covered, for a couple of days.
Notes
- As you can see, this is a thin cake, so small differences in pan size, oven temperature, or ingredient measuring can have an impact on the final outcome, so be precise and make sure to check your oven temperature with an oven thermometer.
- If your cake is not cooked through, add a few more minutes to the baking time. If your cake is dry, it baked too long. You want to hit that sweet spot where the cake is cooked through, but not over cooked. This cake is worth perfecting, and once you’ve got it right for your oven, you’ll have a recipe you’ll make over and over again.
Nutrition
This is recipe is incredible! The friends I made it for absolutely loved it. I’m want to double the recipe, what size baking sheet would you recommend. Would a full size cookie sheet make it too thin? Thank you!
I think you’d be better off baking 2 cakes in 9×13 pans Carrie, because a half sheet pan has short sides and this cake would likely overflow. If you can fit a full sized sheet pan in your oven, then that might work, but the cake would be quite thin and it’s difficult to get that size cake done correctly in a home oven.
This came out better than I thought it would. I was nervous about not having the exact amount of orange peel used for the sugar (still peeled the outer from only one) and using a 9×13 glass pan instead of a quarter sheet pan. It was harder to spread the cake layer in the pan but made it work. The cake was done in 30 minutes and still tender with crispy crumbs. The orange smells so good in this! Thank you for this yummy recipe!! Now, I wonder about adding another layer with fruit spread/marmalade under the crumbs or would that disrupt the textures too much? I guess it would depend on how wet they are too, right?
I think you could try that Rae, marmalade would add a really nice flavor to the cake!
It might be worth adding when posting a recipe that includes cardamom how much better the flvour is when using cardamom seeds which you grind yourself with mortar and pestle or a food grinder. The stuff you get in bottles pre ground is not nearly the same.
Agreed, the first time I ground my own seeds I was astounded!
Love the broad breadth of your recipes. I love cardamom and made your buns previously, so delish.
I was thinking this recipe might be a good small loaf for gifts. What are your thoughts on using a small loaf pan say ~4″x8″? If so, how much should I fill the pan and how would I manage the proper cooking time as I don’t want it too dry. Thank you.
peeled zest of 1 navel orange? Is this the same as grated zest? I am going to add the zest by grating. Not peeling. Hope it turns out correctly.
Oh! I looked it up and used a vegetable peeler to zest the orange. Alice
Personally, I appreciate the time and detail you put into your posts and am sure many others do too. I have been baking since I was a child but enjoy having the extra photos/details to ensure I am not missing anything, despite mostly going off of intuition at this point in my baking “game”. Your blog is a free-to-us service you offer and it’s greatly appreciated, plus I am sure it takes hours of time to create posts as well as obviously develop, test, and shoot your recipes. Doesn’t hurt that your recipes are always spot-on and delicious! Thank you for all you do. Pinning this to bake this weekend 🙂
Thanks for making my day Katie!
I love your site and your,amazing recipes, especially this one. I have noticed a trend that many food bloggers are adopting, in which they put instructional photos throughout the instructions section. I understand it can be helpful for some but it takes up a lot more space on ones phone or computer when storing a recipe for later use and it’s even worse when printing the recipe, requiring far too many pages. Most people with a modicum of cooking/baking experience really don’t require a photo of cake batter in the pan, nor most of the other stages of a simple recipe. I’ve seen a lot of bloggers getting on this band wagon lately. I don’t mean to be offensive or unduly critical, but it’s not really something that adds value to an already excellent blog, if it were a complicated recipe it would be quite appropriate, but this one is simple and straightforward. I hope you’ll take this in the spirit in which it’s meant; ” don’t fix what ain’t broke” as they say in the south.
Hey Lisa, it’s easy to miss but there are 2 buttons at the top of the print page, you can choose whether to print the recipe image and the recipe instruction images, or not. So just uncheck both of those boxes next time and you won’t have any images to print.
Lisa- This is my thoughts exactly! At least now I know that it isn’t just me being picky. Who has time, as well, to scroll through countless photos, and instructions to finally get a recipe that they wanted in the first place? It makes you wonder how these people figure a person would have ever got by with just a recipe from the cookbooks? No, I think the bloggers who put the countless photos and instructions on their recipes are getting a bit carried away! LOL
Don’t forget there’s always a Jump to Recipe button at the top of every post!
Made it this afternoon. I thought it would be too sweet with all the crumb topping and so little cake batter, but it was just right. I guess all the flour in the crumb mixture tempers the sweetness of the brown sugar. Love the cardamom/orange mixture.
Thanks Cheryl, I’m so happy you loved it 🙂
Hi Lisa! sorry for interfering in this conversation but I think I can provide a solution. There’s an app called Pinterest (I’m a fan of it ha ha ha) you just have to install it and save all your recipes there; You will only be occupied by the application, which is not much. Take care. Greetings
Hi Sue! This is the recipe I needed today, when I saw it in my e-mail box, it gave me such a high, it’s as if you had read my mind ha ha ha. Yesterday I received my umpteenth order of 18 kilos of navel oranges (I buy directly from the producer in Valencia), we have to take advantage of the season, so, piecework juices and in salads and biscuits. I make a delicious biscuit with the whole orange in the Thermomix (wonderful, I recommend it), so I also made your recipe with the whole orange and reduced the amount of milk. We are 2, and I think we will not receive visitors for a long time (puff! COVID), so I have made it smaller. Cardamom has been a great success and a novelty compared to cinnamon. Beautiful, thanks for sharing and take care of yourself. Kisses from Spain
Thanks for the wonderful message Maria, hope you enjoy!
Hi Sue, I’m going to bake this today but just wanted to tell you that I’ve never used Cardamom before until you’ve kept it in front of my mind from seeing it so often on your website. Finally bought it yesterday! THANKS!!! I’ll comment after my first taste…can’t wait! ; )
I think you’ll find lots of uses for it Julie 🙂