I have avoided many coffee cake recipes because I look at the topping and see big chunks of some sort of nut and I think, “Picky eaters in my house will not eat that.”  Then I sigh and move on.  But let’s be honest here, I’m one of the picky eaters.  I like the idea of nuts. I know they are healthy.  I just don’t want them mixed in with my sweet stuff.  There, I said it.  But the great news is this: I solved the nut problem.  Cracked the nut, so to speak.

The solution is this: Put the nuts (walnuts in this case) in the food processor and grind them up – go as far as nut butter if you desire.  Then add them to the rest of the crumb.

Once I solved the nut problem, the next thing I had to consider was the fact that the recipe calls for ground cardamon.  Every time I think I need cardamon, I go to the store, plan to buy it, and then I say, “$11.99?!?!?!?!?! I think I have some old cardamon pods in the spice drawer that I can just grind up instead.”  But then, of course, I just make something else.  This time, I went to the store knowing my history and planning to buy the cardamon no matter what.  But I said, “$11.99?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”  Then I said to myself, “wait, now that King Soopers has the worlds dumbest floor plan, is it possible if there is another section of the store with spices that are cheaper?”  And the answer was yes.  I found cardamon in the fancy-wooden-floor-natural-food-aisle for $3.49.

And because I am turning into quite the breakfast flavor aficionado, I served the boys their coffee cake with some bengal spice tea, because it also has cardamon, and is caffeine free.  It was a huge hit.

The picture makes the cake slice look really small, but actually the strawberries are monstrous.  Oh, the recipe… it’s from Baking.