Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake - Overbaked

Sorry for not posting any goodies over the last few days, especially for Easter, I am highly ashamed of myself, but I have a perfectly logical reason for not doing so.

I was feeling extremely tired and ironically, was just telling my family and friends that I was immune to Starbucks coffee because I could fall asleep while drinking a cup of it.  Literally, it no longer did anything for me, in terms of waking me up, or providing me with any energy from the caffeine.  I decided I needed to go to WholeFoods where there is an entire wall of lovely blends of coffee from all around the world and purchase different blends to mix things up a bit. I came to the conclusion, that maybe the caffeine in their coffee, would keep me awake.  I was feeling sluggish and needed some energy, as I had just completed several large orders for French Macarons (which came out beautifully, if I may say so myself). It was a crazy week and I was running low on fuel.

Sad to say, I never made it to WholeFoods; however, I did make it to Starbucks for my usual biweekly drive-by, for my 1 lb. bag of Sumatra whole bean.  When I went to pay, the very friendly employee asked if I ever tried their new limited blend called "Tribute."  I responded, "no, but what type of coffee beans are in it and is it strong?  I was advised that the Tribute blend consisted of Ethiopian, Sumatra, Papua New Guinea and Colombian beans and that is was considered a "bold" coffee, just like the Sumatra.  I had my doubts that  the "Tribute" blend being strong, but decided to take the plunge and purchased it.

In case you are interested in this coffee, below is a picture of the coffee, or should I say culprit.

You must be asking yourself where this story is going, well here it is.  I arrived home Friday evening around 10:00 p.m. and decided to make myself a cup of the Tribute blend to taste it.  One cup was all it took, but it was so delicious that I had myself a second cup. Needless to say, it surely was a tribute, a tribute to me running around the kitchen with so much energy from caffeine, I think I would have run someone over, if they even got remotely in my way.  I looked like a mad scientist in the kitchen.  I couldn't sit at this point, so at 12:00 a.m., I put on my apron and began to pull out all my mixing bowls and ingredients to make the Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake to burn up some of this energy, because sleep was definitely not an option.

The cake itself is not difficult to make, but does require a few time consuming steps.  At 5:30 a.m., I put the cake in the oven.  At this point, I was starting to crash from the caffeine and was extremely tired.  The last thing I remember was sitting down in the living room to relax for an hour, until I had to take the cake out.  The cake was only supposed to bake for 1 hour.  

This is what I looked like at 5:30 a.m...

At 9:30 a.m., four and half hours later, I woke up and screamed....Oh Sh*! as I was running into the kitchen knowing I wasted hours of hard work and over baked my cake.  Nobody's perfect right?  This is what the cake looked liked when I took it out of  the oven....

Let's not forget about the bottom, shall we.... What a beautiful charcoal color.

I'll be posting the non-burnt version of the Meyer Lemon Cake later tonight.