Chocolate Chunk Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

 

I know what you are thinking, “two dessert recipes in one week?” Yes, it’s true.  My apologies in advanced for anyone who is trying to cut back on the sweets for the new year. Clearly, it wasn’t one of my new year’s resolutions : )

I came up with this recipe by complete accident. I was actually trying to make a different recipe and the batter wasn’t turning out. SO, instead of throwing it away (I can’t let anything go to waste) I decided to do a little experiment and see if I could salvage the batter.  I went through my pantry and refrigerator and pulled out everything I had on hand.  After surveying the options, I concocted this yummy recipe for Chocolate Chunk Cream Cheese Coffee Cake (did not mean for that to be a tongue twister).

Here’s what you need:

Cake:

– 1 package of  Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Vanilla Cake Mix

– 1/2 cup milk ( I use rice milk)

– 1/2 oil

– 1 tbsp. cinnamon

– 4 1/4 tsp. Ener-G Egg Replacer + 1/4 cup water (or 3 eggs)

– 8 oz cream cheese

– 3 oz  dark chocolate ( I crumbled up a  Theo Dark Chocolate Bar, but you could easily use a bag of chocolate chips)

Topping:

– 1/2 cup butter (room temperature)

– 3/4 cup GF All Purpose Flour ( I use Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour)

– 1/2 sugar (I would have used brown sugar but I didn’t have any, so I used white sugar for this)

– 1 tsp gluten-free vanilla

– 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

 1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream together cake mix, eggs, oil, milk and cinnamon.

3. Take out the cream cheese and cut it into 1/2 ” chunks and stir it into the batter.

4. Pour it into a 9 X 13 pan and sprinkle chocolate chunks on top.

5. For the topping, place the butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla into a food processor and pulse until it forms small crumbles. (Note: if it is too soft add more flour, or if it is too dry you can add a tsp of water)

6. Sprinkle the topping over the batter.

7. Bake for 30 minutes or until you can pull a toothpick out clean.

Let it cool for 10 minutes and serve!  The combination of the cream cheese and chocolate make this really rich, but oh so good.

And because I made this up on the fly and only used what I had on hand, I’m sure you could make a few tweaks to make it even better. But I ate the whole pan if that tells you anything :)