My knowledge of coffee cakes is pretty minimal. When I bought this cake Allison told me “but you don’t like coffee”, and that’s true. My assumption is that coffee cake is something one eats while enjoying a cup of coffee, and not something that’s supposed to be coffee flavoured. It could be that coffee cakes are often flavoured with things that go well with coffee, in that case a cinnamon streusel is pretty good. All this to say that I don’t really know what a good coffee cake is supposed to taste like and I did not eat this one with any coffee.

Texture wise this cake had a hit and a bit of a miss for me. The crusty cinnamon top was fantastic. It was the perfect blend of crunchy sugar and cinnamon. The dough part of this cake was a little bit soft for my liking. It tasted a little bit like it was under cooked. It was like chewing on raw pastry dough. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but I feel like something lighter and a little dry would work better if you had this with coffee (or in my case tea). Flavour wise it was very cinnamon forward and sweet. I’m okay with this, however I feel like a bit more of a buttery flavour in the dough would have made this a perfectly flavoured cake.

On its own, it’s a fine cake treat. It might have been improved with a hot beverage, but I certainly would not have dipped this cake into that beverage. I’m not sure if that’s something someone does with coffee cake, but I feel like in this case it would have come out of the drink a wet doughy mess. I also feel like most of the sugar and cinnamon would be in your beverage. It’s a fine cake, maybe a little more adult than some of the other cakes from Hostess, but pretty tasty.