Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake

Got up early this morning and made coffee cake.  
Yup, Monday at 5am.
I have to get up pretty early to blog these days. 
And any excuse to cook, or bake, something is OK with me.
I even got a power walk in while it baking and was to work by 6:45.  Woo hoo.
We've been trying to diet, (having too much fun vacationing lately, I guess), but I have an almost unlimited supply of "test eaters" at work. 
I know!  I can get them to eat this and probably do it happily too..
There were happy faces all around, including mine when I tried it.
I did take a walk, you know.

I can see where variations of this would be great. You might want to try fresh berries instead of chocolate, but I must say, chocolate chip coffee cake is especially decadent and not the normal dry coffeecake. I also think this would make terrific muffins, just back them about 20 minutes or so. The topping is just brown sugar and nuts, no flour or oatmeal, and I was a bit worried about it at first, but it was crisp and sugar crunchy. Yum.


This recipe from the Seattle Times a couple of days ago, but looks like it was originally in the Baltimore Sun.

 

Serves 10 to 12

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Topping:

1/2 cup brown sugar 
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, pecans or almonds
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together butter or margarine and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time until incorporated. In a separate bowl, mix together sour cream and baking soda. Sift together flour and baking powder. Add dry ingredients alternately with the sour cream until combined to the butter sugar mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Spread batter into a greased angel food cake pan, or an 8x8 square pan. Batter will be very thick.

Prepare topping by blending with your fingers the brown sugar, chopped nuts and cinnamon. Sprinkle topping mixture evenly over the batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes, testing it with a toothpick to make sure it's done inside.

Cool on wire rack before removing from pan.