When you’re baking before breakfast, ease is of the utmost importance. Nobody wants to tackle aproject bake at nine o’clock in the morning; and at the expense of sounding like cheesy wall art, please, for the love of god, donot make me bust out my stand mixer before I have my morning coffee. So when developing a go-to, classic coffee cake recipe, I enlisted the help of melted butter to create a fuss-free, no-mixer version of the beloved morning staple that can be whipped up in a flash. That way, whether you’re hosting friends for brunch or simply want to treat yourself to a warm-from-the-oven baked good, freshly made coffee cake is never far from reach.
But I didn’t choose melted butter exclusively for the sake of ease: Coffee cakes made with melted butter actually tastebetter than their softened butter counterparts. They’re richer, plusher, and have a smooth crumb with a pleasant springiness.
So why do most recipes call for softened, room temperature butter in the first place?
Softened butter allows bakers to easily beat it with sugar, which is the first step in most cake recipes. This technique is called creaming, and the act of aerating the butter is a way to physically leaven a cake and make it lighter. The roughness of the sugar crystals trap gas inside the butter, creating small air pockets that expand in the hot oven and cause cakes to expand. This gives baked goods a cakey, cotton-like texture and prevents them from being too dense.
But in the case of coffee cake, I’m looking for something hefty, decadent, and pleasantly compact with a tight crumb not unlikepound cake. The best coffee cakes feel substantial, like a buttery tea cake or a lemony loaf. They should be sturdy enough to slice a small square from and eat straight off a napkin without falling apart. This is where melted butter works its magic.
Photo by Travis Rainey, Food Styling by Micah Marie Morton
