Baking Challenge Week 25 (Late!) - Coffee Cake - Cardamom-Pecan Coffee Cake

It's hard to bake when you don't have a working oven.

I went to put something in the oven, and I saw a spark and heard an awful hissing/buzzing noise.  Then there was an incredibly tiny fire in the back of my oven, which actually put itself out, it was so small.

I thought I had just gotten lazy and let my oven get too dirty, and something had built up on the bottom and caught on fire.

As I discovered the next day when I went to clean it, that is not, in fact, what the problem was.  The spark had come from the lower heating element when it snapped clean through.

My landlady is a lovely woman, who promptly ordered a replacement, which didn't get here until our resident handyman was on vacation....of course.  Hence, the delay.

Not that I missed baking much in that heat wave, so I suppose that was the best time of year to have the oven break!

Time to catch up, though.  Here's my coffee cake, based on the yabluchnyk I made for the Russian week of the cooking challenge.  I liked it enough to play with some variations...

Cardamom-Pecan Coffee Cake

Cake

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/3 cup milk

Streusel

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tsp ground cardamom
• 2 tbsp cold butter
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans 

Preheat the oven to 375 F, and lightly grease an 8x8" baking pan.

Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly.  In a separate bowl, stir together the egg and milk, then add to the flour mixture and combine thoroughly.

In another bowl, combine all the streusel ingredients except the butter and pecans.  Cut in the butter until crumbly, then stir in the pecans.

Press half the cake dough into the prepared pan.  Sprinkled half the struesel mixture on top, then repeat with the rest of both.  (As the dough is quite sticky, getting even layers is challenging, so don't worry too much if the top is a bit rough.)

Bake 25 minutes, or until the struesel is crisp and brown, and a cake tester stuck in the middle comes out clean.