Jam Crumb Cake

On Friday night I was bored and had time but not necessarily all of the ingredients needed to make something super fantastic. However, I did have everything to make this yummy looking Jam Crumb Cake from Gourmet Magazine (12/07). I actually first discovered the recipe on Gigi Cakes, another blog with great looking recipes and a lot of cupcakes.

This was one of the easiest cake recipes I've ever made (probably because Olive helped :-) ), and it went very quickly. As usual, I didn't have regular milk on hand. I am somewhat lactose intolerant (mostly can't eat ice cream or drink milk and have to be careful with really creamy things), so I always have soy mik. I tend to worry whenever I use it in baking, but so far I've had good luck. I keep meaning to look up appropriate substitution rules with it, as the consistency is a bit thinner or more watery than regular milk.

Anyhow, in addition to the milk being different, I decided to add cinnamon and allspice to the cake batter. I also used apricot jam, which was sadly a little too solid to swirl around to make a pretty pattern. Finally, I added sliced almonds into the crumb topping. It is also worth mentioning that the recipe yielded a lot more topping than was needed. There was about 3/4 cup leftover.

The cake turned out really nice and makes a great breakfast or snack. I'm glad I added the extra spices. The top was nice and crunchy, and the apricot goes well with it all. And if you're not a big fan of jam, it would probably still be delicious without.