Empty Cupboard Coffee Cake

We are a strange breakfast bunch around here.  Strange because we cook/bake breafast every morning and don't use cereals, poptarts or breakfast bars.  Perhaps that is a result of my husband's British heritage, or perhaps it is just my taste preferences - who knows! 

We are working hard to eliminate sugar from our diets, but once in a while I run into a situation where I can't quite figure out how to eliminate the sugar completely (*see last week's post on cinnamon rolls!* haha)  Today was one of those days.  I woke up this morning to the reality that I should have grocery shopped three days ago.  I have been putting it off for days and it finally came back to bite me! We were out of milk and we were out of eggs so the breakfast pickings were instantly slim.  Waffles? nope.  Pancakes? nope.  French toast? nope.  Coffee cake? maybe......  Since my choices were limited to 1) come up with a desperate variation on coffee cake or 2) go grocery shopping first thing in the morning, I opted to try my hand at coffee cake.  And that is how this coffee cake receipe came to be!  I thought I would share it here in case any of you find youselves in a poorly stocked kitchen at some time in your future ;-)

Empty Cupboard Coffee Cake

Topping

1/2 c brown sugar
1/4c flour
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbsp butter
1/4c oats

Cake

1 1/2 c water
1/3 c dairy powder
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tsp vanilla
1 c vegetable oil
2 1/2 c flour
2/3c sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Directions

1- Preheat oven to 375 F
2- Mix the water, dairy powder and vinegar in a bowl and leave to curdle
3- Mix the brown sugar and flour in a small bowl, grate in about 1/3" cinnamon stick and then cut in butter until "crumbs" form.  Mix in oats.
4- Add oil and vanilla to milk mixture
5- Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to milk mixture
6- Mix batter well and pour into 9x13 baking dish
7- Sprinkle cinnamon sugar topping over batter
8- Bake for 35-40 minutes

It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself! And as an added bonus, when Big-Bug came to the kitchen to find out what we were having for breakfast and heard it was coffee cake he ran down the hall hollering "YAY!! We're having COFFEE CAKE!!"  Haha.