I love to share heirloom recipes, especially when they tell a story. My sister, Paula, was fifteen when I was born. Most of my childhood was spent either on her hip or by her side. She took me everywhere. People who didn’t know our family often assumed I was her daughter. I was seven when she married and moved into her own home with my brother-in-law. During my weekend visits, she always made the Bisquick cake on Sunday mornings before Mass. She’d bring me a warm slice from the oven with juice, and I would eat it in my room while getting ready for church.
Bisquick has been helping home cooks get breakfast—and plenty of other things—on the table for nearly a century. Introduced by General Mills in 1931, the ready-to-use baking mix was inspired by a train dining-car cook who kept a pre-mixed blend of flour, baking powder, salt, and shortening on hand to quickly make fresh biscuits. General Mills turned that clever shortcut into Bisquick, and it soon became a pantry staple for pancakes, biscuits, cobblers, casseroles, and countless family recipes. It’s one of those wonderfully nostalgic ingredients that reminds us that cooks have always appreciated a good shortcut.
I don’t remember the recipe calling for coconut, unless it did, and my sister left it out since neither of us care for coconut. I did include that ingredient when I made it recently, and it wasn’t terrible. It also calls for chopped pecans. My sister didn’t make it with pecans either.
Bisquick Velvet Crumb Coffee Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 1/2 cups Bisquick Original Pancake and Baking Mix
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 TBL vegetable oil
- 1 tsp vanilla
Coconut Topping
- 1/2 cup flaked coconut
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/4 cup chopped pecans
- 3 TBL cold butter, cubed
- 2 TBL milk
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9" round cake pan
- In a large bowl, beat cake ingredients with hand mixer on low speed for 1-2 minutes. Pour into prepared pan.
- Bake 20-25 minutes or untile toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
- When you remove the cake from the oven switch the oven to high broil.
- Mix the coconut topping and spread over the top of the bake cake (cake will be very hot still so be careful).
- Put cake back into the oven and broil for 2-4 minutes on the top rack so the cake pan is about 3 inches from the broiler. It will bubble. Broil until golden brown.
- Let cook slightly before serving.
Let me know if you make it. Be sure to tag @homewithatwist on Instagram so I can see your bragging rights!
Hospitality is in my DNA. I founded Home with a Twist, a daughter’s twist on her mother’s traditions, in memory of my mother to celebrate her life and the gifts she shared with me. Mother loved to celebrate life’s occasions – big and small.
