Crumble Top Coffee Cake

This easy homemade crumble top coffee cake is a cinnamon-spiced breakfast cake with a buttery streusel crumb topping, made from scratch in about 50 minutes. It uses simple pantry ingredients, including Coffee mate® Original Powdered Creamer for added richness, and serves 8 from a single 9-inch square pan. It is a brunch centerpiece or weekend breakfast treat, best served warm.

No special equipment or rising time is needed, just a 9-inch square baking pan, a mixing bowl (or stand mixer), a fork for the crumb topping, and a wire cooling rack. This is a one-bowl cake that comes together quickly, which makes it suitable for holiday mornings, brunch gatherings, or any time you want a homemade coffee cake.

How to make crumble top coffee cake

The crumb topping is made first by cutting cold butter into a mixture of walnuts (or pecans), brown sugar, granulated sugar, flour, and cinnamon. The cake batter comes together separately, then the two are layered, batter, crumble, batter, crumble, so you get a ribbon of streusel running through the middle and a generous crunchy layer on top.

Why this recipe works

• Cold butter in the topping creates the coarse, crumbly streusel texture rather than a paste. Keeping the butter cold is key.

• Coffee mate® Powdered Creamer dissolved in warm water adds a subtle creaminess and richness to the batter without liquid dairy, giving the cake a tender crumb.

• Layering the crumb topping in the middle and on top creates two distinct strata of buttery, cinnamon-walnut crunch in every slice.

• Cinnamon in both the topping and the batter distributes warm flavor throughout the cake rather than concentrating it in one spot.

• No yeast or rising time is required. Baking powder does all the leavening, so this cake goes from bowl to oven in about 20 minutes.