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German Coffee Cake
Make a dough the night before, same as for bread, so it can raise by morning; to two pounds dough take five ounces of sugar, four eggs, one-half pound butter, flavor with vanilla and a little mace (instead of mace, grate a little lemon peel if preferred); mix thoroughly and allow it to raise, roll it out quite thin (an inch or one and one-half inches thick), put in greased pan, allow it to raise and bake in hot oven twenty to thirty minutes. Before baking, if one desires, mix a little butter, sugar, cinnamon and flour together and sprinkle over cake.
— Miss Lydia W. Bagey
This is a yeasted coffee cake built on plain bread dough, enriched the next morning with sugar, eggs and butter. The hinge is the second kneading: the fat and eggs go into an already-risen dough, which will slacken and look ruined before it comes back together.
- Two pounds of doughThat is about the amount you get from 1 lb 4 oz (roughly 4 1/2 cups) flour with water, salt and yeast to match — a modest single loaf's worth. Any lean white bread dough works; a made-the-night-before sponge or a straight dough retarded in the refrigerator both do the job.
- Enriching an already-risen doughWork the sugar, eggs and softened butter in gradually rather than all at once, and expect the dough to break into a slick mess partway through. Keep kneading and it will re-form. This takes 8-10 minutes by hand, 5-6 in a stand mixer with the dough hook.
- "Hot oven"In this period the term is generally taken to mean somewhere around 400-425F, though it was judged by hand rather than by thermometer and usage varied. At the lower end of that range a 1-inch cake needs about 20-25 minutes; the streusel top browns before the crumb sets, so judge by the sides pulling from the pan.
- The contradictory thickness"Roll it out quite thin (an inch or one and one-half inches thick)" is thin only by the standards of a loaf. Press rather than roll, to about 1 inch in a 9x13 pan; it will roughly double on the final rise.
- Mace or lemonGround mace is still sold but has faded from most kitchens — it is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and less sharp than nutmeg itself. Use a scant 1/2 teaspoon for this quantity, or the zest of one lemon.
- The toppingNo proportions are given. Equal weights of butter, sugar and flour with a teaspoon of cinnamon makes a proper streusel; about 2 oz of each is plenty for a 9x13 pan. Rub it to crumbs with cold butter and scatter it after the final rise, just before baking.
- Rising timesThree rises are called for: overnight, after enriching, and in the pan. The enriched dough is heavy with butter and will take 1 1/2 to 2 hours to double at room temperature; the panned rise another 45-60 minutes.
- YieldOne 9x13 sheet, 12 to 15 squares. Like most yeasted coffee cakes it is best the day it is baked and stales quickly.
Yeast-raised coffee cake of this kind is the German Butterkuchen or Streuselkuchen, made throughout the nineteenth century by taking a piece of the household bread dough and turning it into something sweet — a thrifty method that assumed you were already baking bread. American community cookbooks absorbed the form wholesale through German immigrant families, and the recipes usually kept the name "German" even after the crumb topping had become an ordinary sight at church suppers. The instruction to begin with two pounds of existing dough, rather than with flour, is the clearest sign of its origins: it is written for a cook who has dough on hand as a matter of course.