Cardamom Coffee Cake

My friend Cere and her daughter Vida saw me checking out this cookbook from the library and told me I had to try the Cardamom Coffee Cake (p. 195). I love coffee cake, (what I really mean is I love any cake), and I had cardamom in my pantry (not sure why) so I thought that's not one, but two good reasons to give it a try.

Before we get to it, let's be honest: with a pound of butter and 2 cups of brown sugar, you could add a cup of dirt to this recipe and it would still be pretty good. On top of that, you use 4 eggs. In the past, this wouldn't have mattered much to me, but I got my cholesterol reading back last week and it's now over 200. So, this recipe had to be really, really good to make it worth all the saturated fat, cholesterol and calories. In short, it just wasn't that good.

I kept waiting for that bite of spice that I now know I like in coffee cake. It just wasn't there. I have no idea why cardamom was in my pantry or what I used it for, but it tastes to me like a really mild cinnamon. (I think I probably used it in some Indian dish.) This coffee cake tastes like a brown sugar cake - sweet, moist, but otherwise nondescript.

So, all in all, it's fine, my husband liked it a lot, but it's not one I will make again. (By the way, I am guessing that, with all that butter, this recipe was not "trimmed down" from the prior editions of this cookbook. So, it should be the same recipe as in the prior editions.)