Ingredients
Cake
2 1/2 cups flour
4 1/2 t. baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
zest of one lemon
1 t. salt
1 t. (or more) cinnamon
2 large eggs
1 cup milk (or buttermilk)
8 T. melted unsalted butter
4 ripe pairs, unpeeled, cored and chopped
Streusel Topping
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
6 T. unsalted butter, cut up
2 t. (or more) cinnamon
Directions
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Butter a large (8″ x 12″) cake pan
Put all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly with a hand or stand mixer. No, don’t bother to mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately and then mix them together – that is why God gave us electric mixers.
Put all the streusel ingredients in a separate bowl and mix them together with a pastry cutter until they are combined. Be brutal – if there is anything in that bowl larger than a pea, keep hacking away. Sprinkle the steusel on top of the coffee cake. Alternately, just omit the stuesel entirely and sprinkle the cake with powdered sugar when it comes out of the oven you lazy, lazy bastard.
Cook cake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out reasonably dry and not covered with gooey cake mix. Yes, you can use your finger instead. Go ahead – dip it into that sugary, 400 degree mixture.