Its good to be home and back in my kitchen ~ But I think I'm going to need another vacation from my recent vacation.
When we set out for our trip 3 weeks ago to the states to visit family I had not fully prepared myself with the amount of traveling we decided to cram into 3 weeks. I'm still in disbelief on how many miles we drove, walked and even rowed. We easily covered over 1500 miles, traveling to 4 different states and another country (Canada).
The best highlights of the trip were starting off in New York City for 2 nights where we walked 10 miles of Manhattan to eat at the "first" pizza place Lombardi's, checked out the Empire State Building, checked out the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Intrepid Museum by the way free for active duty :) and hitched a free ferry ride to Staten Island to catch a glimpse of the statue of Liberty, after leaving NYC we picked up our car in Syracuse and headed south to Pennsylvania to Hersey Park and went to a Dave Matthews Concert (totally awesome!), then headed up towards Scranton to visit my brother in-law, his gf and our niece for the first time. (This was the first 5 days)
The best bagel cream cheese in Lox in all of NY
Intrepid Museum
Biggest Ladder Back Chair in the world
Dave Matthews
After our time in PA we drove to Vermont to visit family, play some disc golf and had fish in chips in
Putine
Cliff Jumping Lake George
Birds eye view of Montreal
After our stay in Canada we left to meet up with my father in-law at his camp in the Andirondacks where we stayed a couple of nights, went canoeing, boating and thrift shopping. the last leg of our journey we headed back to Syracuse to catch up on sleep, laundry and more sleep before leaving to go back to Japan.
All in all it was a very successfully trip, we saw a lot of family that we haven't seen an a couple of years, our rental car never gave us issues and for the most part we didn't get lost when driving all over the northeastern side of the country.
Now to the food, I made this coffee cake before I left on vacation, some co-workers were craving it, this recipe came out amazing, very light, sweet and the huge brown sugar crumbles are delicious, they were my favorite part. Place this cake soaks up coffee like a sponge.
Adapted from Sally's baking addiction
1 Tablespoon Flour, to coat the pan
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons cold butter, lightly softened in the microwave for 20 seconds
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, spray a 9 inch springform pan with cooking spray and sprinkle the bottom of the pan with flour, tapping out excess flour.
2. Whisk the flour, sugar, salt together in a large bowl until combined. Cut the butter into 1 tablespoon sized pieces and using your hands or a fork mix/mash together the butter and dry ingredients until it resembles a crumbly mixture. scoop out 1 cup of the mixture and set it aside.
3. Transfer the rest of the ingredients from the large mixing bowl into an electric mixer (the batter is going to be very thick and the mixer helps a lot) Add in the baking soda and powder and mix together for 1 minute. Add in the buttermilk, egg, vanilla and mix everything together on medium high speed for about 2 minutes until smooth and fluffy, the batter will look kinda of like frosting, pour the batter into the springform pan and using a spatula smooth the top of the batter until even in the pan.
4. Using your empty large mixing bowl add in the reserved 1 cup of flour mixture and add in the brown sugar and cinnamon, using a fork or your hands crumble up the ingredients together making course crumbs. Sprinkle the crumbs over the batter, pressing lightly so the crumbs stick to the batter.
5. Bake for 50-55 minutes (mine took 50) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, allow to cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes, remove the side of the springform pan and cool completely to room temp.