New Old-Fashioned Coffee Cake

This cake was somewhat of a disappointment. It seemed to be a basic vanilla coffee cake with a spiced, nutty streusel topping. As usual, Joanne Chang added her own twist to it: to prevent the streusel topping from sinking, it was folded into some of the cake batter.

It didn't quite work; there was a thin, crunchy layer on the top of the cake, but most of the mixture was swirled throughout, almost like a marble cake. The streusel/batter parts had a coarse, dry, unappealing crumb and the crunchy texture, and buttery, spicy flavour was lost.

The vanilla cake portion had a fine, dense crumb and good flavour but the cake was a little dry...I believe I over baked it though I removed it from the oven 15 min before the baking time was up.

I prefer cakes of this type to have distinct layers of moist cake and crunchy streusel so this recipe just didn't work for me.