Blueberry Coffee Cake
Blueberry Coffee Cake aka Blueberry Crumb Cake! Soft blueberry buttermilk cake is crowned with a thick layer of brown sugar crumb topping. It’s all about that perfect crumb topping!
In my humble opinion, a truly great crumb cake must have a crumb topping that is just as thick as the cake beneath it. This recipe delivers with an abundant crumb topping.
Folding fresh blueberries into the batter and layering more berries into the crumb topping takes this treat into another league altogether.
This cake is great for dessert or with a cup of tea, but you could also have it for breakfast or brunch on the weekend.
Ingredients
Ingredient Notes
- Cake Flour – Low protein cake flour makes a cake that is very tender with a fine crumb. If you can find bleached cake flour that’s what I recommend for the softest cake.
- Brown Sugar – You can use light or dark brown sugar for the crumb topping.
- Buttermilk – Acidic buttermilk tenderizes the cake and adds great flavor.
- Baking Powder – You’ll notice that there is no baking soda in the recipe, only baking powder. Baking soda is on the base side of the pH scale, so it’s used with acidic ingredients to balance the pH of a batter. I purposely did not use baking soda because I wanted to keep the batter slightly acidic.
- Blueberries – Use fresh or frozen berries. Don’t defrost them first. You should fold them into the batter while they’re still frozen so they don’t break down and turn the entire cake green.
Process photos
See the recipe card for detailed measurements and instructions.
- Add the dry ingredients for the crumb topping in a mixing bowl.
- Mix to combine the ingredients.
- Toss in the butter.
- Mix until the topping looks like wet sand. If you grab a handful it should hold together in a large clump.
- Sift the dry ingredients for the cake batter into a mixing bowl.
- Add the butter and half of the buttermilk and mix to aerate the batter.
- Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
- Fold about 2/3 of the berries into the batter.
- Spread the batter into a buttered and floured 9″ square pan. (You can use a 9″ round pan). Line the pan with parchment if you want to remove the cake from the pan before serving.
- Sprinkle more berries over the batter. Break the topping into large clumps over the batter.
- Layer in the rest of the berries and crumb topping.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
Storage
Blueberry Coffee cake will keep at room temperature for 2-3 days. The cake should never be refrigerated. Leftover slices can be frozen for up to a month.
More Blueberry Recipes
More Coffee Cakes
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Blueberry Crumb Cake
Ingredients
Crumb Topping
- 6 3/4 oz Cake flour (1 1/2 cups, see note)
- 6 oz brown sugar (2/3 cup)
- 1/4 teaspoon table salt
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
- 4 oz unsalted butter (room temperature)
Cake Batter
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 4 oz buttermilk (1/2 cup, divided)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 6 3/4 oz Cake flour (1 1/2 cups)
- 6 oz granulated sugar (3/4 cup)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 4 oz unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 10 oz blueberries (2 cups)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour an 9" square cake pan. Cut an 8"x16" piece of parchment paper and line the pan in one direction, leaving a short overhand on each side. Butter and flour the parchment. (see note)
Crumb Topping
- Combine 6 3/4 oz Cake flour, 6 oz brown sugar, 1/4 teaspoon table salt, 2 teaspoons cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest. Mix on low speed until completely combined. With the mixer running, add 4 oz unsalted butter and continue to mix until the topping looks like sand. Remove from the mixer and transfer to a small bowl by squeezing handfuls to create large clumps. Set aside while you mix the batter.
Batter
- Combine 1 large egg and 1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1/4 cup of the buttermilk in a small bowl and set aside.
- Sift together 6 3/4 oz Cake flour, 6 oz granulated sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. add 1 teaspoon lemon zest. With the mixer running on low speed, add 4 oz unsalted butter and the remaining 1/4 cup of buttermilk. Mix until completely combined. Scrape the bowl and beater. Mix on medium speed for 2-3 minutes to lighten the batter.
- Scrape the bowl and add the egg mixture in two batches, scraping between additions. By hand, fold about 2/3 of the blueberries into the batter. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.
- Sprinkle 1/2 the remaining blueberries over the top of the batter. Sprinkle 1/2 the crumb topping over the batter, breaking the topping into pea to marble sized clumps. Sprinkle the rest of blueberries and then the remaining crumb topping.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool at least 30 minutes in the pan. Use the parchment to carefully lift the cake out of the pan.
- Cool completely on a wire rack
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Notes
Since you love coffee cake, try these other fabulous recipes: Rhubarb Crumb Cake, Peach & Pecan Coffee Cake, Banana Coffee Cake, Pumpkin Coffee Cake, Sourdough Coffee Cake and Sourdough Crumb Cake.
And here are some more blueberry recipes: Blueberry Cheesecake Tart, Blueberry Preserves, Lemon Blueberry Macarons, Blueberry Hand Pies, Blueberry & Cherry Shortcakes and Blueberry Crumb Bars..
I guess you can’t turn off the top element. If you could that would certainly be better. If you can’t turn off the top element I would try a slightly lower temperature. Cover the pan with aluminum foil with the shiny side up to try and deflect some of the heat away from the top of the cake. If there is more than one shelf you might even put a sheet pan on the shelf above the cake to block the heat from the upper element. Good luck.
Oh, it looks like there is a way to set it to just the bottom or just the top element. I will try with the top one off. Thank you!
Yay!
Hi Ceeny. I’ve never actually owned or baked in a toaster oven. Is the heat source at the top or bottom of the oven? If it’s coming from the top I think baking a cake will be a challenge.
It has heating elements on both top and bottom. Should I try a higher temperature to start and then lower it?
Hi Eileen,
I LOVE this recipe. But I recently moved to Thailand where kitchens don’t have ovens and….help! I have a large toaster oven where I can’t really get an exact temperature and I bake by trial and error. So far I’ve successfully baked some cookies. I’ve also baked some simple cakes/brownies using my 8″ square nonstick dark metal pan. This was my first attempt at baking a cake using sifted cake flour. The cake turned out fine, but the crumb topping just melted into the cake! That’s my favorite part! Then the top started getting too browned before the cake was done, so I turned the temperature down and put foil over the top to keep it from burning. I ended up having to bake it almost twice as long. Do you have any ideas on what I can do? I also have a cupcake pan if that would help (same dark non-stick coating). Also, can I just bake the crumb topping by itself and add it to my other cake for now? It has been quite a challenge learning to bake in a toaster oven. I miss my real oven!
Hi !
I was wondering… Is it possible to bake it in a skillet? How would you proceed in this case?
Hi Christelle, I think you could probably bake it in a skillet. Just be aware that a cast iron skillet will bake much hotter so the cake will brown more. You might have to play with the oven temperature based on the material of the skillet. Let me know how it turns out if you try it. Happy Baking!
I tried making this a few days ago and can’t wait to make it again! It was a little more involved than my normal recipes where everything pretty much gets dumped and mixed into one bowl. But the extra effort was soooo worth it! I actually messed up the recipe by using a whole stick of butter in the batter. So I ended up putting it back into the oven a few times because it was still raw in places. I couldn’t stop nibbling on the cooked parts while waiting for it to finish cooking though, so it wasn’t very pretty in the end (and about half gone too!). The cake was unbelievably moist and was the perfect texture. This is the best crumb cake I’ve ever had! I was hoping it would be similar to the Starbucks coffee cake but this was so much better!
How do I change out the blueberries for a cinnamon (like coffee cake) version? What are other good variations on it in case I’m out of blueberries? I LOVE this recipe! I also love how you do so much testing and your explanations of techniques and why things do/don’t work. That must be unbelievably time consuming. Thank you so much for sharing your hard work!
Hi Ceeny! Thanks for visiting my blog and for trying the recipe. I’m glad you think it was worth the effort!
This cake does take kind of long to bake. I used a straight-sided, square 8″ pan. If your pan was a different shape or size it could affect the baking time. Whatever pan you use, the cake batter should come just 1/2 way up the sides of the pan. If you have too much batter just use the extra in a smaller pan or make a few muffins.
Variations: You could just bake it without the blueberries for a plain crumb cake. You could add a teaspoon or so of cinnamon with the dry ingredients for a cinnamon cake. Do you mean you’d like to have a cinnamon swirl or ripple in the cake? I’d have to try it, but my first thought would be to put 1/2 the batter in the pan, sprinkle a layer of cinnamon sugar over that batter and then put the remaining batter and then the crumb topping in the pan. If you try it let me know how it works. You can also fold in raspberries, cranberries or chunks of fruit (like peach) if you have those on hand instead of blueberries.
I’m sure in the future I’ll do other versions of crumb cake. I think an apple cinnamon version would be good for fall.
Ah, yes. Maybe it was my pan that affected my baking time. I used a glass 8″ square pan. I think my oven also heats lower than the setting. I haven’t baked many cakes in this oven and I did have another cake that didn’t brown recently. It also had some under-cooked spots in it.
I have some round heavy metal cake pans, so I will try one of those next time and add 15 degrees to my oven temparature too. I like your cinnamon swirl idea. And apples with it….yum! Maybe fall will have to come sooner for me. 🙂
Not only does the size and shape of the pan affect the way it bakes, but definitely glass will bake differently than metal. Glass is a poor conductor of heat so there’s a good chance that’s why it took longer to bake. The glass pan will take longer to heat up in the oven than a aluminum cake pan would. So of course if the pan takes longer to heat up it takes longer to get the heat to the batter in the pan.
If it was clear glass you will get a nice brown crust on the bottom because the clear glass allows for the radiant heat to brown the bottom and sides of the cake while it bakes. If you try the recipe in a metal cake pan you may not need to increase the oven temp since it’ll conduct heat better than the glass will anyway.
This reminds me what a difference the pan you bake in can make. I’ll work on a blog post all about baking pans and how the different materials can affect the baking process. Thanks so much for the feedback and taking the time to comment. Eileen