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Coffee Cake (T shortening Mix all)
2 T shortening Mix all of the above together. Take out one-half of the mixture and set aside to use for the top. To the remainder add 2 t baking powder 1½ C milk 1 egg Pour in buttered baking pan and sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and remainder of crumbs.
Mrs. H. L. Titus.
This is a crumb-topped coffee cake built on the old "rub-in" method: one bowl of flour, sugar, and shortening worked to crumbs, half held back for the top. As printed here the opening ingredient list has been lost, so the recipe cannot be followed literally without reconstruction.
- The missing ingredientsEverything before "2 T shortening" is absent from the page, which means the flour and sugar quantities "mixed all of the above together" are simply not recoverable. A cake of this type with 1½ cups milk and 1 egg would normally sit on roughly 3 cups flour and ¾ to 1 cup sugar, but that is inference, not the original.
- AbbreviationsT is tablespoon, t is teaspoon, C is cup. So 2 tablespoons shortening, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1½ cups milk.
- ShorteningIn a community cookbook of this type this normally means lard or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening such as Crisco. Butter can be substituted, though it will brown faster on top.
- The hinge: reserve before leaveningHalf the crumb mixture must come out of the bowl before the baking powder, milk, and egg go in. Miss that step and you have no topping and a badly balanced batter.
- OvenNo temperature or time is given. For a cake of this kind, 350°F in a 9-inch square or 9x13 pan, roughly 25 to 35 minutes, is a workable modern starting point; test with a skewer in the centre.
- Baking powderDepending on the period, the powder may have been single-acting, in which case batters were mixed and put straight into the oven. With modern double-acting powder there is more leeway, but there is still no reason to let this batter stand.
- The toppingThe reserved crumbs are sprinkled on with additional sugar and cinnamon, quantities unstated. About 2 tablespoons sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon tossed through the crumbs is in keeping with the style.
- YieldWith the opening ingredients missing the batter volume cannot be fixed; on the reconstructed proportions it would fill a 9x13 pan and cut into 12 to 15 squares. Best the day it is baked; the crumb top softens overnight.
Community cookbooks of this kind were often compiled by women's church or club groups as fundraisers, each contributor signing her recipe by married name -- hence Mrs. H. L. Titus. Such books were typically set from submitted slips of paper and lightly proofread, which may account for the missing opening ingredients here, though the cause of the gap on this page is not recoverable. "Coffee cake" means a cake served with coffee rather than one containing it, a usage often traced to the German Kaffeekuchen brought to the Midwest by 19th-century immigrants; the streusel-style crumb top is associated with that tradition. The technique of using one crumb mixture as both the base of a batter and its topping was a common labour-saver in American home baking.