Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

This coffee cake recipe is perfect for a holiday brunch. It's moist and buttery, with just the right amount of brown sugar crumble on the top!

Yesterday was Easter, and for the first time in a very long time my parents chose to entertain.They invited 11 people over, both  family and friends. We started cooking Saturday night, boiling eggs and what not. All the prep work that could be done for Sunday. Sunday morning I woke up like a little kid at Christmas. I was pumped, ready to go, and annoyingly chatty. The prime rib went in at 8:30 AM and that's when the cooking started.  The guests didn't arrive until 3:30 but my parents and I were ready.

We all love to cook. And who doesn't love to cook for people that they care about. In my family, if you're a friend, you're family. We can be crude and laid back (I refer to this as Hillbilly Deluxe), but we are real, honest, and fun.

All holidays include a mixture of people related by blood and by water. Its all the same to us. I love that about this group. Once you are a part of this family, you know that you can rely on them for anything.The mixture of people last night couldn't have made us more happy.

So onto the food. Easter dinner was a spiral sliced ham, a slow roasted garlic infused prime rib, asparagus, green beans, dill coated baby red potatoes, potato salad (brought by a guest), deviled eggs ('cuz every gathering any time of year calls for a deviled egg), and the worlds most delicious homemade mac and cheese. Just in case you didn't get enough carbs in that meal we had rolls too.

For dessert, we picked up mini eclairs for my father. It was simply a sentimental thing from when my grandfather was alive and they would polish off a giant box together in minutes. My father, not one to disappoint, pretty much ate the whole box himself. It was a bit of nostalgia that was totally worth any tummy-ache he may of had later.

I also made a cream cheese coffee cake. It seemed to go over well. I had never made it before and realized, when entertaining lots of people, you should prolly know whether or not the dessert sucks beforehand.

There was only one slice of coffee cake left, so I'm just going to assume it was good.

Cream Cheese Coffee Cake: Southern Living Homestyle Cooking 2002.

• ½ Cup softened butter
• 1 (8-ounce) package softened cream cheese
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teas baking powder
• ½ teas baking soda
• ½ teas salt
• ½ cup milk
• 1 teas vanilla extract

Topping:

• ½ cup flour
• ½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• ½ cup chopped pecans
• ¼ cup melted butter

Cake:

Beat butter and cream cheese until creamy. Gradually add sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating in between.

Combine flour, powder, soda and salt in another bowl. Add too the butter mixture alternating with the milk.  Mix on low until just blended and stir in vanilla.

Pour into a buttered/greased 12x9pan. Springkle with topping. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Topping:

combine all ingredients!

Tasty! One can never go wrong with a recipe from Southern Living.