Mini Coffee Cakes with Spicy Streusel

Last month, I bought a box of Wackym's Spicy Pecan Cookies from Central Market. I have always loved Wackym's varieties, as they are a Texan company, the cookies are made with real butter, and they have great flavors. Salted caramel? Margarita? Even savory Cheese Nibbles. Check their website for all their flavors; I do believe Spicy Pecan is a seasonal one.

A conversation with a friend about them gave me the inspiration to make a coffee cake with lots of yummy spiced streusel topping (because, hello, the streusel is the best part!), which lead to making these mini coffee cakes. The perfect bite-sized snack or treat! I found a recipe online for mini coffee cakes, but given that I changed a variety of things about it, I just decided to go ahead a write a new recipe. Hope you enjoy!

Sorry (not sorry!), no fancy recipe plug in!

Mini Coffee Cakes with Spicy Streusel

Yield: 12 mini muffin-sized cakes

Coffee Cake

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted, cooled and divided

1 cup AP flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt (I use Redmond Real Salt)

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 egg

1/3 cup milk (I added an extra splash)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Streusel Topping

3 Wackym's Spicy Pecan Cookies, pulverized into crumbs, about 1/4 cup total

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

2 Tbsp. melted butter from above

-- Start with melting the butter; set aside 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) for the cakes, and 2 tablespoons for the topping. Meanwhile preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

-- Prepare your mini muffin tins; this recipe yielded 12 minis for me. Brush tin (yes, even if your pan is "non-stick" with a thin layer of melted butter.

-- In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt + cinnamon and whisk to combine. 

-- Add in egg, milk, vanilla and the 4 tablespoons of melted butter. Stir just enough to combine everything; too much stirring can make your batter tough.

-- Portion into muffin tins; I used a tablespoon scoop for fairly even distribution

-- In a smaller bowl make the streusel by combining the cookie crumbs, sugar, and cinnamon.

-- Once mixed, add the 2 tablespoons of butter and toss with a fork until evenly moistened. 

-- Using a teaspoon, top the coffee cakes with streusel.

-- Bake for 14-16 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

-- Let cool in pan for 10-15 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Coffee cakes should pop right out of your muffin pan!

-- Vanilla ice cream, homemade whipped cream or mascarpone cream would be an added luxury!

I also think these would make a fabulous pie or tart crust! Something sweet with a bit of a spicy kick, especially now that the weather has gotten cooler. What should my next baking project be? Leave me a suggestion!

What I've Been Eating, Part Three

AMAZING chocolate croissant from Vivian's Boulangerie!

Welcome to another edition of what South Austin Foodie has been eating recently! I continue to get carryout a couple times a week, and I try to get things where I can at least get two meals out of my order. Some home cooking, but overall it's been too hot! Here are the main highlights, please keep tabs on my Instagram, especially Stories for a more comprehensive run down of my meals!

Hey Say is a homestyle Vietnamese spot on East Oltorf; I think they're serving a few more general Asian dishes than before, but definitely look for their house specials! These are twice fried wings with a fish sauce that were really good and very different from other wings (in a good way!).

Thai Taste's spicy larb!

Molly inspects some of my first Vivian's Boulangerie croissant order.

From my second Vivian's order, beet and goat cheese kolache, brie and caramelized shallot tiger paw, cardamom snickerdoodle and salted chocolate chip cookies, and almond croissant. They've now expanded their order pickups/deliveries to FOUR days a week! (Very dangerous.) Seriously, some of the best stuff I've had. 

Steamies frozen pork char siu, pork dumplings, and beef bao. Storefront at Airport and Lamar, I will definitely be back!

Here are the Steamies dumplings, which were very good. I think the bulgogi beef bao was my favorite as it had a TON of flavor and the beef was moist. And very pleasantly surprised with the puff pastry texture and filling of the char siu triangle. 

Winebelly's chicken liver mousse is always a favorite.

My friend Curd Culture lives in Houston, but worked with local cheese shop Antonelli's and taught a cheese class via Zoom. A friend and I had the chicken liver mousse and then split this cheese board, a bottle of bubbly,  and sat socially distanced for the class. Great way to spend and evening!

Stunning chirashi bot bowl a friend got from Lucky Robot

We also split these pork belly buns  from Lucky Robot, which were crammed with stuff including pickled cauliflower which gave them a nice crunch. 

Also up there for Best Thing I Have Eaten Recently, this Vietnamese French dip sandwich from the 20Pho7 food truck at Live Oak and South First. The bread was perfect, the pho broth flavorful, the beef super tender and rare! Filled with bean sprouts, scallions, and a spicy mayo. I cannot wait to go back!

Support your local businesses and let's make sure they stay in business! What fantastic things have you been eating?

More: What I've Been Eating

Greetings from South Austin! I've been doing my best to try to support South Austin restaurants, with a few exceptions. Here's a look at what I've been making and getting for take out in the past two months. Caution: may make you hungry! 😂

Homemade: pasta in light cream sauce with asparagus, bacon, pine nuts and parm.

Homemade: coconut cream tarte

Bouldin Creek Cafe veggie burger

Homemade: chili (with beans!) and skillet cornbread

Vespaio canneloni, arancini, beet salad. These were fabulous and I got about three meals out of this.

A dear friend sent me this Bokksu box of Japanese snacks! So much fun!

Homemade: air fryer churros! Easy and yummy!
 (Though not as good as the nearby Churro food trailer!)

Habana pollo salteado, empanada, tres leches

La Patisserie morning bun, croissant, almond macaroon

La Patisserie chocolate hazelnut cake

Homemade: pasta with corn pesto

Bao'd Up BBQ chicken bao

Slab BBQ pork ribs

Tarka's lamb biryani and chicken korma. I can't not get the korma! 

Homemade: raw beet salad, with fennel, red onion and haloumi

Beet issues 😀

Soup Peddler: grilled cheese + salad

Sugar Mama's carrot cupcake and bourbon pecan bar

El Dorado beef enchiladas with calabazas (squash). This was a fabulous evening, being socially distant with friends in north central Austin. Food and friends were excellent! 

A friend and I both ordered carry out from Fat Dragon, coordinated our pick up times, and sat in the parking lot with our cars dovetailed together so we could eat and talk.  Delicious lamb cilantro dumplings and below, dry fried green beans.

Coffee bourbon browned butter blondies. See my previous post!

Artipasta: bolognese + lemon cream sauces for another evening of social distance with a friend.

Thai Fresh pad thai, tom yum soup, veggies

Elizabeth Street Cafe banh cuon and pesty cat.

Oh my. This Queen Beak (fried chicken biscuit) from Bird Bird Biscuit is one of the finer things I have eaten lately! This is the naked version, as I got my chipotle aioli and hot honey on the side, and as I was eating (and photographing) this from my car, the pics with the sauces on them aren't super. This was messy. But worth every bite.

Dolce Neve gelato

Homemade: pao de queijo (Brazilian cheese balls)

Loro: bavette, corn fritters, won ton chips + dips. The bavette is quite good, but somehow I can't get these lightly seasoned won ton chips with peanut sambal out of my mind.

I've heard the buzz about La Tunita 512, and had to go check it out. The consume with birria is delicious! Should have gotten the torta special to dip in the consume -- next time! 

Hungry? Yeah, me too. Time for my next meal! And I should add (and had mentioned in my May post), I've been doing intermittent fasting, so eating all these lovelies, and I am down 20 pounds total! 

What's on your menu?

Devils River Coffee Bourbon

Devils River Coffee Bourbon Brown Butter Blondies

As a longtime member of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance (AFBA), we often have really cool events for our bloggers, although we've had to get more creative in recent months. Instead of meeting in person at a favorite watering hole, we had a virtual happy hour sponsored by Devils River Bourbon.  So yes, this is a sponsored post. I was not compensated financially, only in caloric intake. All opinions are my own, as always.

Devils River Bourbon varieties

Devils River Bourbon is based in San Antonio, and will soon be opening a new distillery/tasting room to the public. In the meantime, they sent us a lovely sampler box with  50 ml bottles of their different bourbons, and a new special coffee bourbon. Our happy hour was scheduled for the day the coffee bourbon was officially released to the public, so we were some of the first to try it! The actual Devils River is in South Texas and is pure, limestone-filtered water, which makes very smooth bourbon according to their website.

Devils River Coffee Bourbon two ways

I am not a huge drinker, so I don't have a lot to go on, but this stuff is good! They use a San Antonio coffee roaster, and prepare the beans to a Vienna roast. They then make a cold brew from them and infuse with the bourbon; these are 80 proof. Their standard bourbon and rye whiskies are 80 proof, while the barrel select is 117 proof, not for the faint of heart!

For our call, I prepared the coffee bourbon two ways: on the rocks and with a little bit of cream, a la White Russian. Smelling and sipping on it straight, you do get the coffee and chocolately notes, and it was VERY tasty with the cream. If you visit their website, they have a wonderful variety of recipes for each of their different bourbons. 

I decided to play around with the bourbon a little bit, and of course I like to bake! I found a recipe for browned butter bourbon blondies from Baker by Nature. Now I love blondies, and make them all the time using the standard Toll House recipe, but the idea of browned butter intrigued me! And why reinvent the wheel?

From golden hued to a roast caramel color, this is brown butter.

When making browned butter (yes, you make it yourself! it's not something you buy), it's best to melt your butter over low to medium heat in a light colored pan so you can see the change in color. If you use a cast iron or dark teflon pan, you won't readily know when the butter is sufficiently browned. Burned butter is bad butter!

I like to use chocolate bars (these were a 70%, so a milder bittersweet) and just rough chop them, but chocolate chips are fine! I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter, and I think the result is fantastic! Sprinkling some flaky sea salt on them after baking is optional, but I like the flavor and touch of crunch the salt adds. Make sure it's a FLAKY SALT, not just regular granular sea salt. Maldon is a French one that's extremely well known, and here I have used Murray River Sea Salt from Australia. Many grocery stores that have spices in their bulk foods section often have a nice selection of sea salts, so you can just buy a couple tablespoons. These are what's known as finishing salts, as they are more expensive and delicate than table or kosher salt, but also have much more flavor to them. 

The browned butter flavor on these is wonderful! I might use a tad more bourbon next time, as the taste in these is subtle but overall, I am extremely happy with them. And won't get drunk off them! 😉

Have you had a coffee bourbon before? How do you drink it? Ever made a dish with it? Do tell!