Strawberry Banana Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

The is adapted from the recipe from the All Day I Dream About Food blog.  Whenever I make food to take to other places or events, I always make some for my kids and this is no exception.  Since this is a cake, and I had 3 different sized springform pans, I made the larger one for life group and the smaller one for us.

Unfortunately, I only took a picture of the finished product and not through the whole process.  Since I wasn't really feeling up to making anything, I figured the least amount of impedances, the better.  It's a challenge to take pictures and to bake.  I did not have all the ingredients, but had done enough baking to know that I can make some changes without it adversely impacting the recipe - at least the ones I do.

A slice of Strawberry Banana Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

Here is what I did, which I doubled the recipe (but will only give instructions for 1 coffee cake).  It's best to chill this coffee cake for a few hours.  It tastes much better the next day after chilling.

I bought a total of 14 lbs of strawberries on sale for 88 cents/lb

Takes awhile to hull and slice so many strawberries for freezing to be used in all sorts of things

Ingredients for Filling:

• 1 cup frozen strawberries (they were fresh yesterday, but I washed, sliced and froze them yesterday)
• 1 teaspoon coconut flour
• 2 Tablespoons water

Ingredients for Cream Cheese Filling:

• 8 oz package of full fat cream cheese, softened to room temperature.
• 1 large egg
• 1 Tablespoon xylitol, powdered (use a coffee grinder to grind granules into a powder)

Ingredients for Cake:

• 2 cups almond flour
• 1/4 cup xylitol
• 1/3 cup whey protein
• 2 tspn cream of tartar
• 1 tspn baking soda
• 1 tspn xanthum gum
• 1/4 tspn sea salt
• 1 1/2 large banana, mashed
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350° F.
• Generously grease springform pan.  Make sure the bottom is level.  (I didn't and one of my cakes turned out lopsided.)
• Heat frozen strawberries on medium high heat until it's simmering, about 3-5 min.
• Combine water & coconut flour in a small bowl and mix well.  This will be used as a thickener for the strawberries.  I didn't want any starch in my coffee cake, so coconut flour is something that is a great thickener without adding any starch to foods.
• Pour coconut flour & water mixture into the strawberries to cook for another 2-3 minutes to thicken.
• Turn off heat and set aside.
• In another bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth.  Add egg and beat until well combined.  Add xylitol and mix well.
• In another large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients for the cake (almond flour, xylitol through sea salt).  Make sure well combined.
• In another large mixing bowl, beat the butter and bananas until smooth.
• Add one egg at a time and beat lightly with each addition.
• With the dry ingredients and the almond milk left, in 2-3 batches, alternate putting into the butter/banana mixture, beat well after each addition and scraping down the sides.
• Pour cake batter into springform pan, making a well with about 1" sides.  I used an 8" and 9" springform pans, but either is fine.  For a thicker coffee cake, you can even use 7".
• Pour the cream cheese mixture into the well and top the cream cheese mixture with the strawberries.
• Bake at 350° for 35 min.  If you're using a smaller springform pan, you may want to increase the baking time for about 3-5 min.  The middle will be a bit jiggly, but the sides should come out clean when tested.

Just after taking out of oven and releasing the cake from the springform pan

• Notes:  You can really use any kind of fruit you want for this recipe.  The original recipe called for Greek yogurt, which I didn't have and forgot to buy, so I substituted bananas for this, but you could've used applesauce, too.

My bigger cake was a bit lopsided because I didn't check to see if the lower pan was level.