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This just sweet enough Blackberry Coffee Cake is loaded with luscious berries and topped with a delicious pecan streusel. Perfect for breakfast or a mid-morning snack. So easy! So good!
When the Berries are Ripe: Make My Easy Blackberry Coffee Cake Recipe
It’s blackberry season here in the Pacific Northwest!
Blackberries grow wild in this part of the country and so profusely that gardeners battle to keep them from completely taking over their yards. Since they’re of the wild variety, they tend to be thorny – so getting to the fruit can be a prickly experience. But those sweet berries are worth the effort and the scratches!
I’m not the only one who feels that way. Along almost every roadside about, bike path, or walking trails, you can find people with buckets foraging for this year’s crop of berries. Lucky for me, our new house came with a built-in blackberry patch.
My first foray into the blackberry bushes a couple of weeks back yielded a couple cups of ripe berries, which we ate fresh. This week, I gathered two quarts of blackberries in less than an hour.
After eating a few and freezing a few more, I decided it was time to do a little baking and create a new recipe.
The result was my Easy Blackberry Coffee Cake – a just sweet enough cake that’s bursting with blackberries. Yum!!
What Do You Need to Make My Easy Blackberry Coffee Cake Recipe?
My recipe calls for simple ingredients that you probably have on hand already. Including…
- Sugar (white and brown)
- Butter
- Eggs
- Milk
- Vanilla extract
- Flour
- Baking powder
- Pecans
- Cinnamon
- Salt
- Blackberries
How Do You Make My Easy Blackberry Coffee Cake Recipe?
As the name implies, there’s nothing complicated about this recipe.
You’ll start by creaming the butter and white sugar together using either a handheld or stand mixer. Next, you’ll blend in the wet ingredients and then add the dry ingredients a little at a time.
After that, you’ll fold in three-quarters of the blackberries by hand with a spatula before pouring the cake batter into a greased pan. The remaining whole berries will be placed on top of the cake, then sprinkled with a streusel of chopped pecans and brown sugar, and topped with small pats of butter.
The result is a tender, moist, bursting with blackberries cake that’s an ideal accompaniment to a cup of hot coffee or tea. My Easy Blackberry Coffee Cake is also perfect for a quick breakfast.
Since it’s not too fussy and travels well, this is also a great coffee cake to bring to a morning meeting or club gathering, or to make and give as a gift. We’ve had three new families move into our neighborhood this summer, so I’m thinking this might be a nice way to introduce myself and welcome them to the area.
Variations to this Easy Blackberry Coffee Cake Recipe
No blackberries in your backyard or region? No problem! This recipe will work well with all kinds of berries. You could substitute equal amounts of blueberries, raspberries, or marionberries for the blackberries. Even diced ripe peaches would be wonderful in this coffee cake!
Because this is a coffee cake and not a dessert cake, the flavor profile is just slightly sweet. I like it that way because it lets the taste of the berries come through. However, if you want a sweeter cake, you could add an extra quarter cup of white sugar to the batter.
Pecans are a favorite of mine and I always have them on hand, so that’s what I used for the streusel topping. But chopped walnuts or almonds would work too. If you go with almonds, you might want to substitute almond extract for the vanilla.
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Easy Blackberry Coffee Cake Recipe
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
Ingredients
For the Cake:
- 1 cup sugar
- 6 T butter
- 2 large eggs
- ½ cup of milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cup of flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp salt
- 4 cups blackberries, divided
For the streusel topping:
- ½ cup small chopped pecans
- 3 T brown sugar
- 2 T butter, cut into small pieces
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 375 degrees
- Cream butter and the white sugar together, using a hand mixer or stand mixer. Add eggs, milk, and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.
- Place the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together in a bowl and stir. Beat dry ingredients into wet ingredients a little at a time, creating a smooth, fairly thick batter.
- Using a spatula, gently fold 3 cups of the berries into the cake batter. (Don’t worry if the berries break up.)
- Spray a 9×7 or 8×8 glass baking dish lightly with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the prepared dish and place the remaining cup of whole berries onto the top of the cake.
- Place brown sugar and pecans into a small bowl and stir. Sprinkle mixture over the top of the cake and berries, then dot with small pieces of butter.
- Place cake into the oven and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove cake from oven and allow to cool before serving.
