Everything about this recipe excited me so I had high expectations for the final result! It’s a little time consuming if you’re making your own caramel though so keep that in mind.

First let me start by saying that 3 hours for a breakfast dish is hard because I certainly don’t want to wake up at the crack of dawn to get breakfast together. I tried to prep everything I could the night before to help reduce some of that time and just mixed together and dry ingredients, went ahead and got my eggs and butter set aside in the fridge.

If you are making your own caramel, let me just go ahead and tell you right now that mine hardened overnight (almost to the point where I thought I wasn’t going to be able to salvage the dishes – not to self to never put something that might need to be heated up in a metal bowl). It’s possible had I been able to heat it up that I would have been able to use it but alas, I had to start over. Which was frustrating because it’s a very time consuming (and hot!) process. I suspect that it might have gotten above soft-ball stage considering how hard it got, but since it did sit overnight it’s hard to know. I like trying to make things from scratch as often as possible, but if I would probably just use store bought next time. I digress…

Since I had already mixed together my dry ingredients for the cake I focused on the butter/brown sugar/eggs mixture. Once it’s ready to go you’ll alternate between some of the flour mixture and milk. Mix thoroughly, but don’t overmix.

I had mixed together all of the crumb topping except the butter so I went ahead and did that and then poured half the cake batter into the pan, added half the crumb mixture, and then the rest of the cake batter and finally crumb topping. Bake this for about an hour and then be sure to let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing from the springform pan.

Top with the caramel and then serve! I was able to salvage a tiny bit of the caramel so that’s what you see on top because I wasn’t about to try and make it again. It was nice to have but not mandatory in my opinion. I loved the pecan coffee cake though and would absolutely make that again and either leave the caramel off altogether or use store bought to top. Still time consuming, but delicious so if you prep some of it ahead of time I think it’s worth the wait!

Baking Ease	8
Time Spent	8
Taste	10
Visual	10

Recipe Used: Sugared and Stirred