Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Peaches & Streusel

It’s officially stone fruit season here in Upstate NY! That means plums, nectarines, apricots, and of course — peaches. For my first peach recipe of the summer, I decided to highlight the juicy fruits with a simple and moist sour cream coffee cake with a cinnamon streusel topping.

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Coffee cake is my default. When I want to bake something but I’m not sure what, and I don’t have any special ingredients in the house, I fall back on some form of coffee cake a lot. But this recipe with the sweet peaches is something a little more special than my standard.

The sour cream in this recipe, along with using melted butter, makes for a soft and fluffy crumb. That’s topped with peaches that have been cooked down with just a little bit of sugar, but mostly are allowed to shine on their own. Finish it with a crumbly cinnamon streusel, because what’s coffee cake without streusel?

What You Need to Get Started

You can easily find all of the ingredients for this peach and sour cream coffee cake at your grocery store:

• Pantry: All purpose flour, White whole wheat flour, Baking soda, Brown sugar
• Spice Rack: Cinnamon, Salt
• Fridge: Butter, Sour cream, Egg
• Produce: Peaches
• Equipment: 8×8 Baking pan, Parchment paper, Mixing bowls, Whisk, Flexible spatula

Let’s Make Peach Coffee Cake

To make this cake, I decided to use a technique that involves baking the cake on its own first, and then topping with the fruit and streusel before baking again for a shorter time. This assures that everything is cooked just as much as it needs to be, and no more.

The coffee cake itself is where you’ll start. While that’s baking the first time, you can prepare both the peaches and streusel. That means there isn’t a lot of downtime in this recipe, but you can plan ahead by prepping the toppings first and setting them aside.

Begin by preheating your oven and preparing a baking pan. Line your pan with parchment paper which will help you remove the baked coffee cake and make cutting easier later.

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. I like using both all purpose and white whole wheat flour here to add a little bit of density. You can sub out the white whole wheat for more all purpose if you prefer, but I don’t suggest replacing it with whole wheat that’s not white.

Whisk those two together with cinnamon and baking soda. Since there’s sour cream in this recipe, that will provide the acid needed to allow the cake to rise without having to use baking powder. Cinnamon adds a bit of spice and also makes the cake a lovely orangey brown color.

In a second, larger mixing bowl, add the melted butter and brown sugar. Be sure that your butter has had a chance to cool slightly. It shouldn’t solidify, but you should be able to easily handle the bowl.

Whisk the butter and brown sugar together along with the sour cream and salt. As I mentioned before, the sour cream helps the baking soda react, adds moisture to affect the texture of the crumb, and it is also there for flavor. Sour cream is basically the supporting actor to the star peaches in this cake.

Add the whisked dry ingredients into the bowl with the wet, and mix them together until they are just combined. You can use a flexible spatula and a folding technique to help with not overmixing. When you’re done, there should be no large streaks of flour.

Transfer the batter into the parchment-lined pan, and use your spatula to spread it evenly around and into the corners. Bake the cake on its own for just about twenty-five minutes. It won’t be fully done after that, but it will be mostly baked through.

You’ll know that it’s a good time to take it out of the oven when the top of the cake appears dry. You don’t want to leave it out to cool for too long while it’s only parbaked, so while it’s in the oven, get started right away on preparing the toppings.

When choosing peaches, you will have an easier time working with a freestone variety. However, I used cling peaches (meaning the flesh sticks to the pit more) and they were fine. You just have to do a little bit more work to cut them.

Perfectly ripe peaches are not rock hard, but have a little bit of give when you gently squeeze them. If you can only find under-ripe peaches, that’s okay. Just let them sit out on the counter for a day or so until they begin to soften.

Dice the peaches into half-inch or so chunks. You can peel them first if you’d like, but I pretty much never bother to peel peaches. If you give them a good scrub, you’ll remove a lot of the loose fuzz.

Add the peach pieces into a saucepan with just a little brown sugar. This will help the peaches release their juices and add just a tiny bit of extra sweetness. Cook over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Continue cooking the peaches for about ten minutes, which will be enough time to get them nice and soft. The juices will also start to thicken up into a nice syrup. You want this to be pretty viscous when these are done, like a warm honey texture.

Another thing to do while the cake is baking is to prepare the streusel topping. You can grab a new small mixing bowl, or use the same bowl that you mixed the dry ingredients in before.

Whisk together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt until they are combined. Then pour in the melted butter, and stir until everything is uniform and coated. This will be a fairly wet streusel, and you should easily be able to pinch a piece between two fingers and have it hold together without crumbling.

By now, your cake should be just about ready. Remove it from the oven, and top evenly with the cooked peaches. There won’t be enough to fully cover the top, so just try to spread them across the entire cake.

Then fill in the gaps with pieces of streusel. Don’t worry too much about how it looks. A coffee cake is more about flavor than presentation. The goal is really to get a good distribution of both the peaches and streusel topping.

Put the topped cake back in the oven for another ten minutes. This will allow the peaches to kind of meld into the top of the cake, and dry out the streusel so it becomes a bit more crumbly. You’ll know the cake is ready when a toothpick comes out clean and the top bounces back after a light touch.

If you’d like to spread the streusel around a bit more after baking, use a fork to gently break up and crumble the pieces. If you don’t do this, your coffee cake will still be delicious. Set the entire pan aside on a trivet to cool completely.

Use the edges of the parchment paper to lift the cooled coffee cake out of the pan and onto a surface for cutting. Use a long, sharp knife to cut this into twelve or sixteen pieces. You can store this coffee cake, cut or uncut, covered tightly at room temperature for a couple days, but it is best the day it’s baked.

How to Serve Peach Coffee Cake

I love a coffee cake for a quick breakfast or as part of a nice multi-course brunch. Use this cake to build an entire peach-themed meal by pairing with a fresh peach, corn, and caramel crisp. Serve mango peach iced tea spritzers to drink.

For a quick breakfast, you can’t go wrong pairing a slice of coffee cake with a cup of coffee or something else cozy. Try these with a chai white hot chocolate or a honey chestnut cafe au lait.

Are you looking for another take on coffee cake? Try a fun cinnamon one topped with roasted strawberries.

Use Up Leftover Ingredients

• Extra peaches make delicious snacks on their own, or a sweet and gooey brunch as part of peach cobbler biscuit sticky buns.
• Cinnamon is the star on its own in cinnamon roll cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.
• I love baking with white whole wheat flour. Try it in a super moist brown butter banana bread.
• Use a dollop of sour cream to top savory mango-corn huevos rancheros.

Special Equipment

• 8×8 Baking pan
• Parchment paper
• Mixing bowls
• Whisk
• Flexible spatula

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• Small square plate
• Orange striped towel