PUMPKIN COFFEE CAKE with the biggest, thickest streusel you’ve ever seen!
I feel like this pumpkin coffee cake recipe needs a disclaimer.
Warning: What you are about to see is disturbing in the best way possible. This coffee cake is so moist and dense, much like a pumpkin pie, that you’ll wonder how life can be so magical. Your eyes will struggle to take in the gloriousness that is the humongous gobs of streusel topping. Ordinary coffee cake will never taste as good to you after eating this one.
There. Now that all the legal disclaimers are out of the way, let’s talk about this recipe.LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS RECIPE RIGHT NOW.
It is, in a word, phenomenal.
I took my very favorite pumpkin coffee cake that I make year after year and I doctored it up into this glorious piece of heaven topped with magical streusel. The streusel. I can’t stop talking about it.
I used the streusel recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks – Baked Explorations. It’s not a traditional streusel with oats or softened butter that requires a pastry cutter and a bunch of elbow grease. It’s melted butter, lots of sugar, cinnamon, and flour that gets stirred together. Much easier than cutting things in, in my opinion. It needs to set for a few minutes, so I always make the streusel first, then the cake, then it’s perfect for crumbling big huge crumbs over your batter.
The cake itself is not like your normal cake. It’s a cross between a pumpkin pie filling and a cake, which sounds weird but is actually quite delightful. The cake, thanks to the two full cans of pumpkin, is super moist and dense, like a custard, but not quite so heavy. It’s just really, really good.
Give this one a try and let me know what you think! And don’t be scared off by the long ingredient list or directions – this is really straight forward and uses ingredients you likely have on hand.
Pumpkin Coffee Cake with Streusel
Ingredients
For the streusel
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1 cup butter melted
- 2 1/2 cups flour
For the cake
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup brown cup sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup butter, room temperature
- 2 eggs
- 2 15 ounce cans pumpkin puree
For the icing
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick spray.
- To prepare the streusel, stir together the sugars, cinnamon, salt, and melted butter in a medium mixing bowl until well combined.
- Stir in the flour. Set aside while you prepare the cake batter.
- To make the cake, add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt to a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.
- Add the sugars and butter to a medium mixing bowl and beat with a mixer until light and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs and pumpkin until just combined.
- Add the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just combined.
- Spread cake batter into prepared pan.
- Take the streusel topping in your hands and press together to form large crumbs. Top the cake with the streusel. It will seem like too much, but use it all for the best streusel experience.
- Bake for 50 minutes or until a tester inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.
- Cool completely.
- Whisk together the powdered sugar and milk to make the glaze. Drizzle over the top before serving.
Tips & Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Carol irminger says
Could never get this done would not make it again and for sure would only use one can of punkin
Holly says
hi! is there anyway to half this recipe to make a 8×8 size cake? do you think that would work?
Karly says
Yep, I think halving it would work fine in an 8×8 or 9×9. You’ll want to keep an eye on the bake time as it will likely change.
Emad Aldaous says
The ingredients in video don’t match the written ingredients.. Also the instructions in video are different from the written instructions
Karly says
Hi there! The ingredients should match…I’m not seeing a difference. The instructions are also the same as far as I can tell, but the video is a bit out of order with making the streusel second. It’s hard to fit all the details in such a short video, so try to make it look as cohesive as possible. Either way, follow the written recipe and you won’t go wrong. 🙂
Kimberly Davis says
If I were to make muffins using this recipe, would I need to add a crust? Or does the custard crust a bit around the edges?
Karly says
It’s not really a custard, it’s still a cake. Just very dense and moist. It should work fine as cupcakes.
Baba Fumi says
I tried other pumpkin coffee cake recipes, but this recipe was superior!
You’ve added a video which is very helpful. Thank you.
Karly says
So glad you enjoyed the coffee cake and video!
Sweet Tooth Baker says
Successfully baked in mini-loaf pans! Poured in about two inches of batter, topped with streusel. Baked about 30 mins. Covered the top with foil when the streusel was browning too quickly. I top the streusel lightly with melted chocolate drizzle (instead of powered sugar) and sprinkle of salt to balance the sweet. Pumpkin taste isn’t too strong so palatable for those who traditionally dislike the squash. Everyone loves these custardy, not too sweet coffeecakes.
Karly says
Thanks so much for sharing! That chocolate drizzle sounds delicious!
Rosario Rodriguez says
I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong!!! I added the pumpkin puree to the butter and sugar mixture and it didn’t come our smooth, but looked almost liked scrambled eggs. The butter was cold, not hot or melted from the microwave and I used an electric mixer! Please help!!
Karly says
Hello! It sounds like the cold butter probably just separated a bit when you added the pumpkin. It shouldn’t hurt anything. I’d still go ahead and bake it as directed. 🙂
Hannah says
When listing the ingredients it should also have ICING. Because I just went through the ingredients to make this and added the icing ingredients to the cake because I thought it would be it’s own list like the Streusel. My mistake, but I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Karly says
Oh, shoot, you’re right. I’m sorry about that. I’ve updated the recipe. Hope it still turned out for you!