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German Coffee Cake
A recipe for coffee cake, which comes direct from the Fatherland, calls for a pound of risen dough (enough for a small loaf), into which is worked 2 tablespoonfuls of soft butter, 1/2 cupful of sugar, I beaten egg and ¼ of a nutmeg, grated. Knead this, roll out in a sheet and fit into a shallow pan; cover and keep warm until well risen. Beat 2 eggs and add enough powdered sugar to make like very thick cream. With a sharp knife make slanting cuts all over the light dough, and put in these some of the egg mixture. Dust thickly with cinnamon and bake in a quick oven.
This is a bread-dough cake rather than a batter cake, built on a pound of ordinary risen white dough enriched after the first rise. The method is closer to a sweet focaccia than to anything from a cake tin.
- The pound of doughA pound of risen bread dough is roughly what a loaf made from about 2 to 2 1/2 cups of flour yields; the recipe itself calls it enough for a small loaf. A one-pound package of supermarket frozen bread dough, thawed and given its first rise, is a reasonable stand-in.
- Working in the enrichmentButter, sugar and egg added to already-risen dough will make it slack and sticky before it comes back together. Keep kneading past the point where it looks ruined; five to eight minutes brings the gluten back.
- Nutmeg quantityThe nutmeg figure in the text has lost its fraction. A quarter of a whole nutmeg, grated, is about half a teaspoon and is the amount that suits this quantity of dough.
- The panA shallow pan, greased. Note that a pound of dough pressed out half an inch thick will only cover about an 8- or 9-inch square; in a 9x13 or quarter-sheet it will lie much thinner. It rises noticeably under the cover.
- Second rise"Keep warm until well risen" is 45 minutes to an hour at ordinary room temperature, longer in a cold kitchen. The dough is ready when a fingertip dent fills back in slowly.
- The egg-and-sugar fillingTwo eggs beaten with powdered sugar to the thickness of heavy cream takes about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of sugar. Make the slashes shallow and slanting so the mixture sits in them rather than running off the surface, and work quickly to avoid deflating the dough.
- A quick ovenUsually read as somewhere around 400-425F. At that heat a thin sheet bakes in roughly 15 to 20 minutes, until the top is set and the cinnamon has darkened; the egg glaze will scorch if left longer.
- YieldOne shallow sheet, cut into squares, serves eight to ten. It is at its best the day it is baked, like any bread-based cake.
Kaffeekuchen in the German sense is not a cake flavoured with coffee but a cake eaten with it, at the afternoon ritual of Kaffee und Kuchen. Dough-based versions like this one are the older and thriftier form, built on risen bread dough enriched and dressed on top rather than on the eggs and butter a true cake demands. German immigrants brought the habit to American kitchens in the nineteenth century, and the slashed, sugar-glazed, cinnamon-dusted surface here is a cousin of the streusel-topped Blechkuchen baked on a sheet pan.