About This Small Batch Streusel Coffee Cake For A 6-Inch Pan

This small batch streusel coffee cake recipe is made in a 6-inch round cake pan, swirled with cinnamon brown sugar, and topped with buttery, crunchy streusel! The cake is made with sour cream, making it extra moist and flavorful.

Why You Should Make The Recipe

Here are all the reasons to make this streusel coffee cake:

The recipe is small batch.

Most coffee cake recipes are made in a 9 x 13-inch rectangular cake pan, serving 18 to 24 people. But this streusel coffee cake recipe is made in a 6-inch round pan. The smaller cake size only serves 4 hungry folks or 6 more reasonable ones!

The recipe uses basic pantry ingredients—no extra trip to the grocery store required!

It’s likely that you have everything you need in your pantry to make this streusel coffee cake recipe: flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. That’s it! Additionally, you’ll need butter, eggs, and milk, too. However, you do need sour cream to make the recipe. But you can easily substitute the sour cream with yogurt or other creamy dairy—learn more in the recipe!

The cake recipe stores well.

Because of the sour cream and cinnamon filling in the recipe, the cake crumb stays moist and fresh for days. Additionally, the buttery streusel topping acts like a lid and helps prevent the cake from drying out. Cool, right?

Ingredients and Substitutions

Now that I’ve convinced you to make this coffee cake, here’s everything you need to make the recipe:

Shopping List For Small Batch Streusel Coffee Cake Recipe

granulated sugar
all-purpose flour
ground cinnamon
kosher salt
unsalted butter
light or dark brown sugar
Dutch-processed cocoa powder
baking powder
whole milk
sour cream
pure vanilla extract
large eggs

And let’s talk about some key ingredients and potential substitutions:

Common Ingredient Substitutions For The Recipe

Here are common substitutions for the ingredients in the recipe:

All-Purpose Flour. Substitute the all-purpose flour with your favorite 1-1 Gluten Free All Purpose Flour (I like the ones by Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur Baking Company) to make the brownies gluten-free!
Kosher Salt. Replace the kosher salt in the recipe with half its amount with table salt. Note that if the recipe instructs you to use ¼ teaspoon of kosher salt, use a pinch of table salt instead.
Unsalted Butter. You can substitute the unsalted butter with salted butter without any noticeable difference in taste.
Brown Sugar. Either light or dark brown sugar works in the coffee cake recipe.
Cocoa Powder. Dutch-processed cocoa powder will make your swirl darker—learn more below! But in a pinch, unsweetened cocoa powder will work, too.
Whole Milk. Whole milk in the cake batter can be substituted with low-fat or skim milk, as well as whatever plant-based alternative dairy milk you prefer. Just note that if you use a milk with a “strong” flavor like coconut, soy, or oat, you’ll be able to taste it in your coffee cake, too.
Sour Cream. You can substitute the sour cream with crème fraîche or plain unsweetened regular or Greek yogurt without any noticeable difference in taste.

Dutch-Processed Cocoa Powder

You need ¼ teaspoon Dutch-processed cocoa powder to make the cinnamon swirl for this coffee cake.

Natural Unsweetened Cocoa Powder versus Dutch-Processed Cocoa Powder

Cocoa powder, when used in baking recipes, often comes in two varieties: natural unsweetened, and Dutch-processed.

Natural unsweetened cocoa powder is more typical and is cocoa powder in its purest form. It is slightly reddish brown in color and results in deeply flavored chocolate goods. Because it is slightly acidic, it is often paired with baking soda in baking recipes to help create a chemical reaction that will cause the baked good to rise in the oven.

Dutch-processed cocoa powder is natural unsweetened cocoa powder that’s been treated with alkaline to neutralize its acidity, giving it a darker color and milder flavor. It is the cocoa powder that is used for making midnight-black baked goods like Oreos.

slices of small batch streusel coffee cake

How To Make Streusel Coffee Cake

Here are the basic steps to make this streusel coffee cake recipe from scratch:

Prep the ingredients for the streusel, cinnamon filling, and cake batter. (Prep Time: 10 minutes)
Prep the pan. (Prep Time: 5 minutes)
Because the recipe makes a tall and deep cake, I instruct you to line the pan with an unusual method. You’ll need to create “handles” from parchment paper that will help you lift the pan out of the cake.
Make the streusel. (Work Time: 5 minutes)
Most streusel is made by cutting cold butter into dry ingredients. However, I’ve found a faster and easier method. I instead instruct you melt the butter and mix it into the dry ingredients to form large clumps and crumbs.
Make the cinnamon filling. (Work Time: <5 minutes)
Make the cake batter. (Work Time: 10 minutes)
Assemble the cake. (Work Time: 5 minutes)
Bake the cake. (Bake Time: 55 minutes)

Best Recipe Tips

Tip About Ingredients

You can skip the Dutch-processed cocoa powder in the cinnamon filling; it’s mostly there for color and to make the cinnamon swirl filling stand out against the cake’s yellow crumb! Dutch-processed cocoa powder adds more contrast, but in a pinch, natural unsweetened cocoa powder works too.

Best Equipment Tip

This recipe makes a relatively TALL coffee cake! You need a 6-inch cake pan with at least 3-inch tall sides (I used this one for my cake). If you have a 6-inch springform pan, now is the time to use it. Springform pans tend to have taller sides than regular cake pans, and it will be easier to turn the cake out of the pan if you go this route. If you go the springform cake pan route, you can skip the step of lining the pan with handles since you can just unlatch the sides!

Foolproof Technique

In the recipe below, I instruct you to cut long strips of parchment paper to line the bottom of the pan with (in addition to the traditional parchment paper circle). These long strips will later serve as handles to pull your cake out of the pan.

Truthfully, you don’t *need* the handles to turn out the cake. You can turn out the cake by running an offset spatula or butter knife along its border to unstick it from the pan. Then, place an upside-down plate over the top of the cake pan and invert the cake very quickly. Carefully lift the pan off the cake, then place another upside-down plate over the bottom of the cake and quickly flip the cake again so it’s right-side-up on the second plate. Voila!

But why don’t I instruct you to do this? It’s a little more finicky than the handles, and you can lose quite a bit of streusel if you’re not quick enough with your flipping. But you do you!

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