Coffee and Walnut Struesel Tea Cake

February is here, much sooner than I had expected. The past month has gone by so fast like a blink of an eye, leaving me wonder what’s making life so recklessly fast paced and ridden. The weeks in January just galloped away, much before I realized that we had stepped into February and are soon half way through into it. Do you sense the same notion that I do? Really, I have no clue why.

I have been feeling too restless lately, my mind too busy, my emotions disparate and my body physically dissolute. Hanging between the pendulums of taking some important decisions, I am primed with making those choices that will bring about big change in our lives. Of taking a stance whether I should or should not. There are many at this moment, some long standing ones that need to be pushed off, some small yet important that cannot be ignored and some as big that they cannot be disregarded. The pressures to be decisive will increase as time clocks away and things will get clearer as I tick off each of these from my bucket-list. Time is a good healer and things will settle down soon. Soon I will come to a consensus to believe that - what happens shall be for our good.

While all of these have kept my mind busy lately, somewhere in the corner of my mind nests my dire desire to stay composed and stress free; of looking out means to get away from these chaos of life. On one such weekend, this Coffee and Walnut Strudel Tea Cake was made.

Coffee and Walnut has always been a winning combination for me, that being one of my favourite choices of cake whenever I order out. The Strudel with Oat topping gives this tea cake a lovely rugged, tough look, without ignoring the beautiful crunch in each bite. Hope you enjoy this cake as much as I did.

Coffee and Walnut Struesel Tea Cake

INGREDIENTS

For the cake loaf:

175 gm. plain flour
175 gm. salted butter
175 gm. brown sugar
1 tbsp. ground flax seed in 3 tbsp. water *
2 tbsp. yogurt *
1 tbsp. strong black coffee
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
60 gm walnut pieces

For Struesel Topping:

20 gm. broken walnuts
20 gm. regular oats
40 gm. plain flour
25 gm. granulated sugar *
25 gm. cold salted butter

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 190º and grease a loaf tin with butter. In a large mixing bowl, sift all the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the walnuts and stir well. In another bowl, pour all the wet ingredients and mix well. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix well till just combined. Pour batter into the loaf tin.

To make the Sruesel topping, take the walnuts, oats, plain flour and sugar in a mixing bowl. Gently rub in cold butter into this mixture till its crumbly. Top this crumbled mixture on the cake batter. Bake for 30-35 minutes till a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool on a rack and slice to serve.

* I strongly dislike the flavor of flax in my bakes. However I do realize that flax is one of the easiest and best replacement for eggs. Similarly I always had winning results with yogurt as replacement, hence I combined both of these to get the perfectly textured cake.
* I used granulated sugar for the struesel topping because I ran out of sufficient brown sugar. You may use brown sugar instead.