Buttermilk Streusel Cake with Fruit

This is one of my recurring favourites, especially when I have a little buttermilk kicking about in the fridge. It's one of those infinitely variable cakes that you can adjust to suit whatever fruit you have on hand. Rhubarb, as the original recipe used, is great, but so are berries, stone fruit and mandarins. You can omit the streusel and use some sliced nuts or a sprinkling of sugar to further simplify the already extremely easy recipe, and change the flavours up a little- I used lemon zest to make it taste bright and fresh, but nutmeg goes very well with peaches, too. You can add a little almond extract for stone fruit, some orange zest with blueberries, cinnamon with apples, and so on. If you don't have any fruit, you can also just make a straight-up streusel cake, substituting a quarter of the flour used with cocoa powder to make a chocolate version. You can even marble the chocolate and vanilla parts- this is a very versatile recipe.

While it's delicious on its own, accompaniments are welcome. Vanilla sauce, whipped cream or sour cream all give a textural counterpart to the spongy cake and crunchy streusel. Which one you use depends of whether the fruit you chose is more sweet or sour- use the former two with more sour fruit, and the latter with sweeter ones.

I used a couple of peaches, some blueberries and raspberries, a nectarine and my leftover 18% sour cream. As always, this cake tastes extremely bright and summery, soft and tender with the right amount of crispy streusel, the fruits adding colour and flavour. Just make sure the fruits are in relatively light pieces so they don't sink into the cake. If you don't have cake flour, substituting 30 grams of the flour called for with cornstarch will let you use all purpose flour. This will make the cake lighter and more tender. Once good trick is to use vanilla pudding powder instead of cornstarch for this in order to add some extra vanilla and colour. 

Don't forget to make some coffee or tea to go with it!


Buttermilk Streusel Cake with Fruit
Adapted from Chefkoch

280 g. Sugar
3 Eggs, room temperature
2 Packets vanilla sugar
Zest of one lemon
Pinch of salt
375 ml. Buttermilk
375 g. Cake flour
2 1/4 Tsp. Baking powder

To Top:
400-500 g. Fruit, in thin slices if large
60 g. Butter, softened but cool
60 g. Sugar
1 Packet vanilla sugar, or 1 Tsp. Vanilla extract
90 g. Cake flour

Grease and line a 8"x8" or 9"x13" baking pan. Preheat the oven to 200℃.

Beat the eggs, zest, salt and sugar until fluffy and pale yellow. Whisk in the buttermilk and sift in the flour and baking powder.

Pour into the prepared baking pan and top with fruit. Mix the butter, flour and sugar with hands and sprinkle the pieces on top of the fruit.

Bake for 20 minutes at 190℃, and 15 minutes at 180℃. Serve with vanilla sauce, whipped cream or sour cream.