Fruited Cheese Coffee Cake Recipe

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line jelly roll pan, 15-1/2 x 10-1/2 x 1 inches, with foil and grease with butter.

With a hand mixer, beat on low speed sugar, margarine, shortening, baking powder, vanilla, almond extract and eggs in large bowl, scraping sides often until ingredients come together. Increase mixer to high speed and beat an additional 3 minutes until smooth. Stir in flour by hand until incorporated. Do not overmix.

Reserve 1/3 of the batter and set aside. Spread remaining 2/3 of the batter evenly in the bottom of the foil-lined baking pan. Evenly top batter with spoonfuls of canned cherry, apricot, or blueberry pie filling, and gently spread to cover.

For the cheese filling, combine cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract until smooth. Add egg and mix just until combined. Drop evenly by spoonfuls over fruit. There will be some gaps.

With a star tip, pipe reserved one-third of cake batter in a lattice pattern over the top of the fruit and cheese mixture. (Alternatively, you can drop remaining batter evenly over the top by tablespoon.)

Bake 35 to 40 minutes until lightly browned. At this point, you can pipe on glaze and serve warm, or let cool and then glaze.

For the glaze, mix powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk until smooth. Spoon into a ziptop bag, squeeze out the air, and seal. Snip a tiny bit from one of the bottom corners of the bag and drizzle glaze evenly over coffee cake.

Yield: 18 large servings; 32 small servings