Planning a drive trip, one option is to bring breakfast with you – savings and fun for kids.

Set up a breakfast picnic in your hotel room with cereal, yogurt, juices, and bring along Travel Breakfast Cake.

Most hotels have a mini-fridge, just bring along food and utensils for breakfast. Tip: Be sure your hotel room has a mini-fridge.

Gather up cereal, juices, yogurt, fruit. Pack paper bowls for cereal, small plates for cake, plastic spoons, napkins.

Stash a cooler in your car to keep yogurt, juices, milk, other drinks cold.

As a special treat, bake a Travel Breakfast Cake.

What we call “travel breakfast cake” is slices of cake, wrapped up to take with you, and ready to eat.

Here are two recipes for travel breakfast cakes – these cakes keep well for two or three days.

Make cake day before, cut in slices, wrap up in plastic wrap, pop in the refrigerator to take on trip next day.

Or, make cake in advance, and put wrapped up slices in plastic bags in the freezer.

Sour cream coffee cake

1 cup butter
2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts 
4 tsp of sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one at a time. Fold in sour cream and vanilla.  Fold in flour sifted with baking powder and salt. 

Combine remaining sugar, nuts, and cinnamon.  

Place about 1/3 of the batter in a well greased, floured bundt or springform pan. 
Sprinkle with 3/4 nut mixture. 

Spoon in remaining batter.  Sprinkle with remaining nuts and bake about 60 minutes or until done.  Cool on rack.  

Italian lemon olive oil cake

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cups sugar
3 large eggs
¾ cup olive oil
2 large lemons, zested and juiced (about ⅓ cup juice and 2 tablespoons zest)
¾ cup milk
Powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 9-inch round springform pan and line with parchment paper.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, set aside.

In a separate large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, and olive oil until just combined. Add in lemon juice and lemon zest, mix until combined.

Stir in about a third of dry ingredients, then stir in half of the milk and repeat, ending with the flour mixture.

Pour cake batter into prepared cake pan. Bake in oven on the center rack for 50 – 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. (If the top of the cake starts to brown too quickly, cover with foil.)

Let the cake cool in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Let cake cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Notes about the recipes

Coffee cake is a family recipe from a longtime friend. It’s a cake her mother always made, and our friend recently stayed with a cousin who served this cake at breakfast.

Recipe for Italian lemon cake is from This Italian Kitchen (thisitaliankitchen.com). Olive oil keeps the cake fresh, cake is easily assembled and baked in a short time.

 
Travel for Kids
Created by people, not AI