Easy Cream Cheese Coffeecake

When I was younger we never had real breakfasts during the week. If it was Monday through Friday, we ate cereal.

But, if it was Saturday or Sunday, the chances were pretty good that we were going to have chocolate chip pancakes, biscuits + hashbrowns + eggs + bacon, french toast, or some other awesome "real" breakfast.

A very rare treat, but one of my absolute favorite breakfasts, my mom would make this amazing, delicate, flaky, tasty coffee cake, with jam oozing out of either end.

It was heavenly.

When I was older and went to college, I would come home once a month and my Nana would ask me what I wanted for breakfast: this was usually what I requested!

It wasn't until I got married and was living in Florida when I asked for the recipe myself.

I was shocked!

It DIDN'T take hours to prepare! It was quick, and easy...

And unbelievably impressive!

Whenever my husband's sailor buddies would stay over on the weekends (we always seemed to have a house full of single sailors, and they all called me Mom!), I would bake up a few of these coffee cakes. As soon as I said "breakfast is ready!" they would swarm the counter and moments later the entire coffee cake would be gone.

Then I would sit back and smile ass the compliments poured in.


Easy Cream Cheese Coffeecake

Dough:
4 TBS butter
2 C. Biscuit mix (Hungry Jack buttermilk mix is good, or Bisquick, or even Jiffy)
3 oz cream cheese
1/3 C. milk

Filling:
1/3 C. Jam (strawberry, plum, cherry, apricot, raspberry, orange marmalade: whatever your family likes!!!)

Glaze:
1 C. powdered sugar
1-2 TBS. milk or orange juice
1/2 - 1 tsp. vanilla or grated orange rind
Nuts or coconut (optional.. I never add this part, but my mom added it in the original recipe, so I am sure it's good)



First you are going to cut the butter and cream cheese into the biscuit mix until the consistency of corn meal... It may take a little bit of elbow grease, but you will get it there. I use my trusty pastry cutter and it goes pretty quickly.



Once it is all crumbly, stir in the milk. Knead on a flour surface until well mixed and smooth.

Roll out on floured parchment paper until it makes a rectangle about 12" by 8"...



Spread the jam down the center of the dough.



Starting on either end of the jam, cut strips at one inch intervals from the filling to the edge of the dough.



Cross the strips over the filling, overlapping from side to side as you go.



When all the strips are folded over, transfer the parchment paper to a cookie sheet.



Bake at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.



Do not burn: in my picture I accidentally left it in too long and it got a little dark. Watch closely after 10 minutes: this delicate dough goes from "golden" to "burnt" very quickly.



In a small bowl or measuring cup, add the vanilla to the powdered sugar.



Slowly stir in the orange juice or milk until a nice consistency.



Drizzle over the coffee cake.



Cut and serve warm.

Is delicious when paired with a tasty coffee. My favorite is Chocolate Orange coffee... Seriously amazing... I am going to miss coffee for a while, but more on that later.

Enjoy your coffee cake!