In Malaysia, we put roasted peanuts and sesame when the cake still moist in middle so it stick to the cake, when cold down a little, just spread the coarse sugar. So the sugar will stick on it but not fully melted. It won’t drop out when eat like this
Malaysia's appam balik.. we will add black sugar (replace white sugar), a famous stall in Penang sells black sugar version. The traditional version is sugar + margarine (roughly spread around) and add a few dollops of cream corn = all while the batter is still cooking (the heat will melt the sugar, margarine and sweet cream corn.