Our strawberry-rhubarb coffee cake is a moist and tender treat that practically screams “spring.” It’s loaded with tangy rhubarb and sweet strawberries and finished with a buttery crumb topping. Making the batter is much like whipping up a tray of biscuits: Chilled butter is cut in rather than creamed, and this produces an uber-tender crumb. You won’t need any special equipment, just a couple of bowls, a saucepan for cooking the fruit, and a standard 9-by-13-inch baking pan. It’s perfect for a spring gathering or brunch, but we won’t blame you if you keep it to yourself and enjoy squares of it throughout the week.

Coffee Cake vs. Crumb Cake

Both coffee cake and crumb cake are tender, moist, and can be served for breakfast, dessert, or a snack, but there is one key difference that sets them apart—and it all lies in the sweet and buttery crumb topping known as streusel. While you’re likely to find streusel on a coffee cake, it’s there as more of an accent vs. a main component of the cake itself. In fact, some coffee cakes don’t even feature a streusel at all. Crumb cake, on the other hand, is as much about the streusel as it is the cake below, with most crumb cakes containing a near-equal amount of each.

Equipment Needs for Strawberry-Rhubarb Coffee Cake

Making this springy baked good couldn’t be simpler and requires only a few pieces of kitchen equipment, including:

Baking pan: You’ll need a 9-by-13-inch baking dish for this recipe. You can use either a glass or metal pan, just be sure to butter it well to help the cooked cake release. If you don’t have a 9-by-13-inch pan, you can split the batter between two 8-inch square baking pans or two 9-inch round pans.

Saucepan: To make the fruit sauce, you’ll need a medium saucepan. It should be large enough to comfortably hold six cups of chopped rhubarb and a scant three cups of sliced strawberries. A heavy-bottomed pot will help keep the mixture from scorching as it simmers.

Mixing bowls: You’ll need a few mixing bowls of varying sizes for this cake: three medium bowls (one to hold the cooked fruit mixture, one for making the crumb topping, and one for the liquid ingredients), and a large bowl for making the batter in.

Whisk and wooden spoon: You won’t need to take out your electric mixer for this coffee cake, but you will need a whisk for combing the dry ingredients and a sturdy spoon for stirring together the batter.

Pastry knife (or two forks): If you have a pastry knife, use it to cut the butter into the flour mixture when making the batter. Otherwise, simply grab two forks and use them to work in the butter instead.

Wire rack: Letting the finished cake cool on a wire rack—and not directly on your counter—allows air to circulate around the pan, cooling it more evenly and efficiently.