Good Morning Sunday!

I woke up this morning thinking about coffee cake.  My grandmother Dondero's coffee cake, specifically.  But a quick look through the recipe box that my Mom started for me when I got married didn't produce the recipe.  I knew I could get it again if I needed to, but I wanted the version that I'd written down while my older sister made it in her kitchen back home in Tacoma.  I found it tucked into a cookbook that I'd taken with me on a getaway weekend - which was the last time I made it.  I was relieved to find it, but sad to realize that I was missing a key ingredient - pecans.  But by that point I was going to make some coffee cake, so I started a search for another recipe.

I found one that seemed fairly straight forward and got started.  The batter was basically the same as my grandmother's and the crumble topping was close too - minus the pecans. But the new recipe I found called for putting the crumble in between layers of batter where Grandma put all of it on top.  It seemed to me that doing both would make it better.
Just as I was getting started with the batter, a sleepy-eyed Natalie walked into the kitchen and offered assistance.  In recent weeks she's done a lot of that and it's been great - we've collaborated on a number of meals and baking projects and I have really loved spending that time with her.  I put her to work on the crumble while I tried to figure out how to spread half of what was a very gooey batter in the bottom of the pan.  About half of the crumble went over that, then another layer of batter and more crumble...

About 30 minutes later we had a warm, cinnamony coffee cake to enjoy with our Peet's.  It was good, but it wasn't Grandma's.  Pecans are on the shopping list so I'll be ready the next time coffee cake comes to mind.
The recipe is below.  I love the fact that I didn't write any instructions, just the ingredients.  And the crumble is basically my sister's best guess - she doesn't ever measure the ingredients for that.  Her best tip though?  She makes about 4x the topping and freezes it in single-recipe quantities so all she has to do is whip up the batter and pull out the crumble when she wants to make it for her husband and kids.  Genius.