New York-Style Crumb Cake

I learned the hard way: New York-style crumb cake is not to be confused with coffee cake—ever. A very passionate born and bred New Yorker (aka Renato Poliafito) informed me, quite brutally, about the not-so-subtle differences between the two. It was a dressing down I won’t ever forget. It was as if I’d confused Picasso with Norman Rockwell. First and foremost, New York crumb cake is all about the crumb topping. It is obscenely large in proportion to the cake. In fact, the topping is nearly