Quick Coffee Cake

This is a recipe from a Quaker Oats recipe booklet that focuses on making inexpensive meals using oats and/or cornmeal. We fell in love with the coffee cake the first time we tried it. It's like a sweet cornbread with a cinnamon-streusel topping. Yum!


Cinnamon Topping:
2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 tbsp. butter or margarine, melted

Batter:
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil or melted shortening
1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.

For topping, combine brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter; set aside.

For batter, sift together corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt (I didn't sift, I just stirred it with a fork). Add milk, oil, and egg; stir only until dry ingredients are moistened.

Pour 1/2 of the batter into prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with 1/2 of cinnamon topping. Top with remaining batter and sprinkle with remaining topping.

Bake at 375 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. Serve warm.

When serving, it comes out of the pan easier if you let it sit for several minutes. This gives the butter in the topping a chance to harden a bit, making the pieces hold their shape better. Learned that one the hard way:)

Variations:
Coconut topping (pictured above): Add 2/3 cup flaked or shredded coconut to topping ingredients.
Raisin topping: Add 2/3 cup raisins to topping ingredients.
Nut topping: Add 2/3 cup chopped nuts to topping ingredients.