Quick Pear Streusel Coffee Cake

From her grandmother on her mother's side, a great baker in the Austria-Hungarian tradition, Gail found this great ample streusel coffee cake recipe in her card files. And here it is revised with a little twist from using pears instead of apples.

Quick Pear Streusel Coffee Cake

For the cake:

Unsalted butter, for the baking dish
1 1/4c. All purpose flour
2 1/4tsp. baking powder
1/2c. Sugar
1/2tsp. salt
1/2tsp. ground cinnamon
One at large egg
1/2c. Whole milk
4tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
2 ripe pears (Bartlett's are preferred,) unpeeled cored and chopped approximately 1 1/2c.

For the streusel topping:

1/2c. Sugar
1/4c. All purpose flour
3tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut up
1tsp. ground cinnamon
Heat the oven to 400°F.Butter and 8inch square baking dish.

To make cake combine the flour with the baking powder, sugar, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. In separate bowl, beat the eggs and then mix in the milk and melted butter. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, add the pears and mix well. Pour this into the buttered baking dish.

To make the streusel, mix with the sugar, flour, cold butter and cinnamon in a bowl by the pinching them together with your fingers until well combined. Sprinkle over at the top of the batter.

Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes until it is golden and dry on top.  Cool in and the pan and then cut into squares. This cake keeps for to four days covered at room temperature

Recipe courtesy "Gale Gand's Brunch," written by Gale Gand with Christie Matheson, Clarkson Potter, 2009.