Daring Bakers: Meringue Coffee Cake

Finally.  I have missed more than one of the Daring Bakers challenges in the last few months.  I am glad that I got back on track with this one!

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

I managed to get the coffee cake made this week despite the fact that my son has not been a fan of napping for more than 30 minutes at a time.  At the moment I am trying to get this post written before he wakes up!  So, forgive me if this one is short and sweet.

The dough wasn’t too difficult to put together, but even after an hour and a half rise it hadn’t really doubled in bulk.  I do not have a great relationship with yeast.  I added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 3/4 teaspoon of cardamom to the flour mixture.

The filling.  Oh my goodness.  The filling.  How can you argue with this?  Sweet meringue, chopped pecans, cinnamon sugar and chocolate chips.  I did one ring with chocolate, and one without.  I prefer the one without if I’m enjoying this for breakfast.  I found that the chocolate hides the other flavors too much.

Rolling this up was easy, but when I went to form the ring I couldn’t get the edges to completely seal together.  I also didn’t have much filling on the edges, so a section of my ring was just bread…which still tasted delicious.

After baking, the meringue puffed out of the vents and got nice and brown.  It is so lovely!  I couldn’t resist breaking off a piece of it to enjoy.  Yummy.

I made the coffee cakes the day before and sent half of each one to work with Ben the next morning.  I was worried that it wouldn’t stay fresh overnight, but I had a piece the next afternoon and it was quite good.

Here is the link to the recipe.  I am too pressed for time to put the recipe on this post!  Ok, now off to get the kitchen cleaned before the little man wakes!  Enjoy!