This doesn’t seem to be a mystery to anyone else, but it is a mystery to me. How do you get really great crumbs on your crumbcake and how do you make sure they stay put for maximum effectiveness? If the crumbs are too heavy they are more fun to eat and don’t bounce off your chin, but it seems they sort of sink into the batter more than desired. Smaller crumbs are, well, not as fun to eat and often bounce off your chin.

After many variations of crumb size and placement too numerous to mention, and dangerous amounts of coffeecakes consumed, I theorized that I should purposely layer the crumbs in my coffeecake in the middle – right where they want to go! Like reverse psychology. I just love those crumbs so much I don’t want to see them escape.

I did your typical crumbly crumb top on the other half so it’d be like a control portion (you know all this experimenting is very scientific) and baked them both.

In the end my vote is for the crumbcake on the right, though I think the effect would have been better if I’d made slightly smaller crumbs (I do get carried away).

So go embed those crumbs!!!