Rum Raisin Coffee Cake w/Browned Butter Icing

Confession time: the "rum" I used was actually rum extract. I rarely buy rum, but when I do I don't use it for baking. ☺ For the record, I buy rum during the holidays to make hot buttered rums, and ultimately, those hot buttered rums served as the inspiration for this coffee cake. Sort of. At least they inspired me to use browned butter icing. Seeing as how it's June and not rum season, I decided to buy the rum extract. If you keep real rum on hand and want to use that then I say, "Go crazy nuts!!" I'm just not sure how much real rum you would use so you'll have to experiment. That' not a bad thing. Note: I did not actually wait until the coffee cake was completely cooled before I added the icing. Consequently, the icing melted and was a little runny. I recommend that you wait for the cake to cool. If not, it's all good. It still tastes great and when you cut that first slice, the icing will run to the bottom of the pan.

Vanilla Buttermilk Coffee Cake w/Brown Sugar Bacon Topping & Maple Icing

It's been a while since my last post - a long while, and for that I'm sorry. I had run out of inspiration and other things were going on at home. But I'm back and I'm back with bacon! I don't want to tell you how to run your kitchen, but I recommend cooking the bacon beforehand like perhaps the night before. Since I used an entire 12oz. package of bacon (yes you read that correctly), I baked it in the oven so it wouldn't take forever to cook. An entire package of bacon might seem excessive, but when you consider how much bacon shrinks during cooking you see why I used that much. Feel free to adjust the amount of bacon.

Apple Cider Pecan Coffee Cake w/Apple Cider Icing

Pumpkin pie, hot cocoa, apples, and apple cider are all Fall favorites. Well, at least they're my favorites. I wish I could say that I lovingly make homemade hot spiced apple cider from freshly juiced apples...but I can't. The truth is that I buy instant hot apple cider just like I buy instant hot cocoa. I use the Alpine Spiced Apple Cider. You can usually find it next to the hot cocoa at the grocery store. This coffee cake is inspired by my husband's apple cider pancakes: it's yummy and not too sweet, which is just how I like my coffee cake. The key here is to not reconstitute the spiced cider mix. In other words, don't add water; just add the mix directly to the dry ingredients.