Savor your morning with this Café au Lait Snack Cake
Mornings aren’t always our strong suit. Thankfully, award-winning cookbook author and inRegister food columnist Aimee Broussard has managed to make them more enticing, creating three different make-ahead brunch recipes to help us spend our evenings cooking or baking, and our mornings getting extra sleep…and taking a bite of this Cafè au Lait Snack Cake.
Broussard’s snack cake combines the classic pair of coffee and cream found in a café au lait for a caffeinated sweet treat. With a cream cheese glaze and coffee flavored cake, this dessert will work well past the morning hours.
Café au Lait Snack Cake
A Cream Cheese Glaze rounds out the cream portion of this coffee-and-cream cake.
Cake Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1⁄3 cup half-and-half
3 Tbsp. brewed espresso or very strong black coffee
Cake Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mist an 8-in. square baking pan with baking spray and line with parchment paper, with excess on two sides to create a sling.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, cream butter and sugar together for 2 to 3 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until each egg is incorporated. Beat in vanilla.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
In a measuring cup, combine half-and-half and espresso.
Add flour mixture to butter-sugar mixture, a little at a time and alternating with cream-espresso mixture, mixing well after each addition, until just combined. Scrape batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out mostly clean. Transfer cake to a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes in pan. Prick holes with a skewer or fork into the top of the still-warm cake (still in pan) before glazing to allow some of the glaze to seep into the cake. Use a spoon to drizzle glaze or, for more coverage, pour directly on top of cake.
Remove from pan and set directly on wire rack to cool completely. Discard parchment paper and cut cake into 9 squares to serve. Allow glaze to set before serving.
Note: Small coffee beans set on top of each square are for aesthetics only and should be removed prior to consuming.
Makes 1 (8-inch) cake.
Cream Cheese Glaze Ingredients:
1 cup powdered sugar
4 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
¼ cup whole milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Instructions:
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat powdered sugar and cream cheese together until fully combined. On low speed, beat in milk and vanilla until milk is worked into glaze.
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