Toffee Crunch Coffee Cake

This coffee cake hides ribbons of crushed toffee candy and chopped pecans between layers of a tender buttermilk crumb batter. The same flour-butter-sugar mixture that makes the cake also becomes the crunchy streusel when you set half aside and mix in the crushed candy. Smart and efficient.

Buttermilk reacting with baking soda gives this cake its lift and tang. The acid in the buttermilk tenderizes the crumb while the soda creates gas bubbles that keep everything light. Without the buttermilk, you’d have a dense, flat cake that can’t support all that toffee.

Crushing the candy bars takes a little prep. Freeze them solid first, then sandwich between two sheets of foil and roll with a rolling pin. Frozen toffee shatters into clean, even pieces. Room-temperature toffee just bends and sticks to everything. You want small, crunchy bits that melt slightly during baking and create little pockets of caramel throughout the cake.

Pro Tips

• Grease and flour the Bundt pan thoroughly. The toffee and sugar create sticky spots that grab onto the pan if it’s not well coated.
• Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes before inverting. Too soon and it falls apart. Too long and the toffee cements it to the pan.
• Layer carefully: batter, then toffee-nut mixture, then more batter, then more toffee. Even distribution means every slice gets crunch.

Variations

• Use Heath bars or Skor bars as your toffee candy for a readily available option.
• Swap pecans for slivered almonds for a different nutty contrast.
• Dust the finished cake with powdered sugar or drizzle with a simple vanilla glaze.