Large Crumb Coffee Cake recipe from Living Eventfully

This past Christmas was a quiet one. We enjoyed the company of each other, friends and our extended family.
In my attempt to create my own Christmas Traditions with my small young family, I went hunting for a  bit of my own childhood love... crumb cake.  Now as my mom always says, she is not a baker.  She loves to cook but never baked.  So the crumb cake I remember as a kid was Entemann's.  Yeah I could have gone to the store and just purchased one, but then I would not be me; so I searched for a recipe.

Every recipe for coffee cake or crumb cake I found looked like large hunk of cake with a thin layer of fine crumbs. I remember this cake with huge crumbs, so I did an image search and came across this beautiful blog called Living Eventfully.  This picture of her cake spoke to me.

I asked Kim-Erin from Living Eventfully if it was okay that I share her recipe for Big Crumb Cake or as she calls it Go big (crumb) or go home - so cutely cleaver I love it!   She agreed and of course I am so thankful. Thanks so much for the beautiful post Kim, I will make this delicious cake forever.

This cake came out moist, delicious, light and oh the crumbs on top -- Yum.   The crumbs come out as big as you can make them and the recipe gives plenty to pile on the batter.  Don't forget to wrap it up tight if your planning on making it ahead of time.

As for Christmas morning, it worked out perfectly! I made this recipe two days before and wrapped the cut pieces well.  When we woke up the kids tore into some gifts of corse, but at some point we all needed a little break.  Mommy got to drink coffee (and eat cake!) instead of starting to make pancakes or something.  No restless kids waiting for breakfast, just nom nom sounds and back to presents!

Monkey Cupcakes with Ganache Recipe

 Monkey Cupcakes 

courtesy of the November 2009 issue of Parents Magazine.  Sorry they do not have the recipe posted yet.

Update:
I was thinking of these today because a friend of mine was talking about a dream she had about us making strawberry cupcakes with chocolate ganache.  I think these would be great strawberry with strawberry cream middles. yum!  
These were chocolate though, and the kids I was told went silent while eating them.   I guess it was the yummy things to pick off of them and eat, where to start first what to have next, just gave them the nom noms.  
Anyway... I went looking for the instructions again to update this post and still I cannot access them I found millions of individuals who made them so I know it exists but I cannot give proper links so instead here is how you make them.

24 Cupcakes
Make any type of cupcake you like, brown wrappers if your like me and everything has to match (although I did not do that here, they were for my kids and so they get what they get).

24 Ginger snap cookies
1 Ganache Recipe (as follows)
48 Mini Oreos
48 Brown M&M's OR plain ole chocolate chips
small bag of buttercream frosting your recipe or the store bough in a zipplock bag with a small hole in corner of bag

Once your cupcakes are cool, make up your ganache.  You can start to dip your cupcakes directly into your ganache but really it will be a bit thin the trick is to let it set up for a small amount of time.  Not where it is solid and you could pipe it, but where you could dip and it will actually stay on your cupcake.  This is a good time to prep those Ginger snaps.

Take the cookies and put them on a microwave safe plate (If your not fast you may want to to do this in batches, or else you will be eating broken cookies all day) put them in the microwave for 20 seconds to start, then add a few more seconds until the cookies are semi pliable just enough to cut them with out breaking the whole cookie. Cut them about 2/3 down so you have a larger upper portion the smaller lower.  Set them aside for quick assembly, along with the oreo ears.

If your ganache has a thicker consistency you can begin to dip the cupcake.  Allow the excess to drip away and form a nice even coating.   Add your upper and lower mouth piece and oreo ears while the ganache is still wet. Once this sets up it will not be easy to stick these pieces.  If you run into this problem though a dab of more ganache will do the trick.   Do one at a time like this or if you feel comfortable do a few and then decorate and then do a few more and decorate them.  

For the Eyes you just take your make-shift piping bag and dab on white dots for eyes and add on the chocolate chip or m&m.  

Enjoy.


Chocolate Ganache

9 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips
1 Cup heavy cream

Place the chocolate into a medium bowl.  Be sure it is free of water!

Heat the Cream in a small sauce pan over medium heat and bring just to a boil, don't walk away because this will boil over.

Pour the cream over the chocolate and walk away!!  for about five minutes...

Whisk the chocolate mixture until it is smooth and even colored, with no lumps it will take a bit of time but soon it will be beautiful.

Give it time and you could pour this over a cake to cover it as with my Guinness cake, or you could do these cupcakes, or you could put this as a filling for cupcakes, you could allow this recipe to set up in the fridge and come to it with a mellon baller scoop out a bit and then roll it in nuts and you have TRUFFLES.  I Love Ganache