Lemon Curd Coffee Cake

I had some lemon curd left over from making the lemon thumbprints and I went out searching for a lemon curd coffee cake. There are quite a few recipes out there on the web, but I settled on this one. I’ve generally had good luck with recipes from Taste of Home, since they tend to come from home bakers like myself. Some of the recipes that come from professional kitchens just don’t turn out the same way when you try them at home.

I don’t generally like to cut in butter by hand, so I usually rely on my food processor to do the work for me. I don’t know if that made the difference here, but my dough was a big crumbly mess and there was no way that I could incorporate all of the dry ingredients. As I ended up with less usable dough overall, I didn’t layer the dough with the lemon curd and coconut crumb mixture as the original recipe did. I just put the dough in the pan, which barely covered the bottom of the pan, and topped with the lemon curd and coconut crumb mixture. I ended up using about half of the crumb mixture.

I was also a little bit scared when I realized that the dough didn’t contain any sugar. But the dough was kind of biscuit/scone-like so I figured maybe it would be ok. Being so crumbly, I didn’t have much hope that it would come together when baking, but in the end it was ok. The cake layer was biscuit-like, but it worked well with the sweet tang of the lemon curd. In the end it was quite good. I think I would include 2 whole eggs and maybe a touch more sour cream/yogurt to the dough so isn’t quite so dry and hard to work with.

1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup coconut

2-1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup cold butter, cubed
2/3 cup sour cream or yogurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup lemon curd

1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Preheat to oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9” springform pan and place it on a baking sheet.

In a small bowl, combine the flour and sugar. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in coconut; set aside.

In a large food processor, combine the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs; transfer this mixture to a large mixing bowl. In a small bowl, combine the sour cream, lemon juice, lemon zest, egg and egg yolk; stir into crumb mixture just until moistened.

Spread the batter in the prepared springform pan. Carefully spread the lemon curd over the top of the batter, to within 1/2 in. of the edge of the pan. Sprinkle with the coconut mixture.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes. Carefully run a knife around the edge of pan to loosen; remove sides of pan. Combine the glaze ingredients; drizzle over warm cake.

Recipe from Taste of Home