Raspberry Brown Sugar and Almond Coffee Cake

Ingredients:
4 cups all purpose unbleached flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
10 ounces (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups light brown sugar
5 eggs
1/2 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons pure almond extract
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups fresh raspberries
1 cup whole almonds, coarsely chopped
powdered sugar

Preparing the cake:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch by 13-inch baking pan

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Toss with your hands and set aside.

Combine butter and sugar in bowl of KitchenAid mixer. Using paddle attachment, mix on medium speed for 5 to 8 minutes to cream the butter. The mixture should be smooth and pale in color.

In a medium bowl, combine eggs, milk, and almond and vanilla extracts and mix with whisk. Add small amount of egg mixture to bowl of creamed butter and mix on medium speed until fully incorporated. Continue adding small amounts until all of egg mixture is mixed into butter. Scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula and mix for another 30 seconds.

Remove bowl from mixer. Alternately add small amounts of flour mixture and buttermilk to bowl, mixing with wooden spoon just until all ingredients are incorporated. [Set aside 1/4 cup of flour mixture and toss with raspberries to prevent from sinking to bottom.] Fold in flour/raspberries, taking care not to smash fruit. Pour batter into prepared baking pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle chopped almonds over top.

Bake on center rack of oven for about 1 hour, or until golden brown. Test center of cake with skewer. It will come out clean when cake is finished. Let cool for 30-40 minutes on a wire rack, then dust with powdered sugar and cut into pieces. This coffee cake will be fragile until completely cooled, so remove warm pieces carefully, using a pie server to left pieces out of the pan.

Variations: To turn this into a chocolate orange coffee cake, zest one orange into the batter, replace the raspberries with semisweet chocolate chips. After baking, poke top of the cake with a toothpick and brush an orange juice and sugar syrup over the top before drizzling chocolate ganache over the top and sprinkling with chopped toasted almonds.