I was sitting on an airplane reading Woman’s World Magazine when I found this recipe. Being very hungry at the time, I couldn’t stop looking at the photo. I went to the store for ingredients as soon as I got home, but didn’t get around to baking the cake until this morning.
I took some liberties with the formatting of the recipe, but it’s still the creation (as far as I know) of the food editor’s at Woman’s World. And yes, it’s a cake mix based cake. I know some of you don’t like cake mix, but maybe you could take the idea and use your favorite scratch base. While everyone loved the cake mix version, I might try it with Flo Braker’s scratch buttermilk cake recipe next time just for fun.
Note the butter. I used salted butter in the cake and the topping. Since the topping doesn’t have any added salt, I recommend sticking with salted butter. If you only have unsalted butter, you should probably add about 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the topping mixture so it won’t taste flat.
Since I was going for convenience here, I used frozen berries. Fresh berries would have cost about $10.00, and I wasn’t ready to splurge for that, seeing that this was a convenience type cake. The frozen berries worked, but they did add some extra moisture to the topping. We kind of liked it that way, though…it was like having cobbler on top of cake. Still, now that I know how good the overall cake is, I’d probably spend money on the fresh.
Woman’s World Three Berry Crumb Cake
Cake:
1 (18.25 oz) box yellow cake mix, I used Betty Crocker Butter Recipe Yellow
8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), softened
3 eggs
1 teaspoon lemon zest (yellow part of peel)
Buttermilk — measurement given for whatever type of liquid is on cake mix. I used 1 1/4 cups buttermilk.
Topping:
2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
12 tablespoons butter, melted – I used salted
1 ½ cups (more or less), fresh* mixed berries – strawberries, blueberries, blackberries
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9 inch springform pan with flour-added cooking spray.
In a mixing bowl, mix together cake mix, butter, eggs, lemon zest and buttermilk. Beat for 2 minutes, using high speed of electric mixer. Pour into pan, spread to edges of pan and bake for 45 minutes.
Prepare topping. In a mixing bowl, mix together flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and melted butter. Crumble it up.
Sprinkle some of the crumb mixture over top of cooked cake. Lay some fruit over the crumb mixture, then top with remaining crumb mixture. Return to oven and bake for another 25 minutes. Let pan cool on a wire rack.
Serves 10
I find it interesting that when you eat a cake with fruit on it, it is easier to tell yourself that it is healthy!! Not really so but this cake is delicious. Yum, yum, yum. I made mine in a 9 x 13 glass pan and cut the time by about 10 minutes for the beginning. I used a yellow cake mix with pudding so I don’t know if it was that or the buttermilk but the cake was super moist and fluffy. I used some frozen mixed berries that I had here. Blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. Very good but I would prefer strawberries in the mix as the recipe calls for. The frozen berries added a LITTLE moisture but not a whole lot. There was plenty of crumb topping, which I liked, I’m not a frosting fan so this was perfect. I will certainly be making this again. Thank you so much again for a super recipe.
Actually, I just made some muffins last week with Ener-G Egg Replacers, and they worked quite well. I haven’t been successful with brownies, though. I would think they should work in this cake so I will give it a try. The recipe looks great!
Pam, I wish that were the case. There are eggs, though. I left them out by accident! Thanks for catching that.
Have you tried using Ener-G Egg Replacers?
Am I reading the recipe correctly that the cake doesn’t contain eggs? I’m allergic to egg whites so it caught my eye. Oh, I’m hoping so…
Claire, if I went to Sunday School, I would TOTALLY take this.
Jami, thanks. My gift, along with a hand-painted plate, was some real bath bombs. I guess I don’t have to make my own now.
Debbi, the nice thing about the frozen berries was the extra moisture seeped into the cake and it stayed moist for a long time….moist in a good way.
This is perfect. I have to make something this week and this will do nicely. I already have everything but for the buttermilk. I’ll use some frozen mixed berries that I have, I like the idea of it being more moist on top. I’ll let you know how it turns out, thanks!!
Happy Mothers Day Anna!!!!!!! Jami
This looks so good…nice and summery. It’ll be a great Sunday School breakfast treat sometime!