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Coffee Cake
1 cup scalded milk 3/4 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup sugar 4 tablespoons shortening 1 cake yeast softened in 1/4 cup warm water 1 egg 2 cups flour (about) Sugar, cinnamon Cool the milk and add the yeast and one-half the flour. Beat well and let rise until very light. Add the slightly beaten egg, sugar and melted fat, mix thoroughly and add remaining flour. Let rise until almost double in bulk. Pour into shallow, greased pans. When light, sprinkle thickly with sugar and cinnamon. Bake twenty minutes at 400 degrees F. Serve hot.
A yeast-raised cinnamon-sugar cake in loose batter form rather than a kneaded dough — it is poured, not shaped. Two rises are called for, plus a third in the pan.
- The yeast cake"1 cake yeast" is fresh compressed yeast. The small household cake is 0.6 oz and is usually treated as roughly equivalent to one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, though cake sizes varied. Soften it in the 1/4 cup warm water, comfortably warm rather than hot.
- Cool the milk properlyThis is the hinge. Scalded milk should come down to about 110F before the yeast goes in; much hotter and the yeast will be damaged or killed. Scalding was standard practice with raw milk and is generally explained as denaturing milk components that interfere with the dough; with pasteurized milk you can simply warm it.
- The saltSalt appears in the ingredient list but never in the method. Add the 3/4 teaspoon with the second half of the flour, not to the first sponge, where direct contact slows the yeast.
- ShorteningFour tablespoons is 1/4 cup. Any solid vegetable shortening, lard or butter works; melt and cool it slightly so it does not cook the egg when mixed in.
- A batter, not a doughTwo cups of flour to one cup of milk gives something closer to a thick pancake batter than a bread dough. "About" is the operative word — add enough flour that it drops heavily from the spoon but still pours.
- Rising timesNone are given; the recipe judges by appearance ("until very light", "almost double in bulk", "When light"). Expect roughly 1 to 1 1/2 hours for the sponge, 1 hour for the second rise, and 30-45 minutes in the pan at ordinary room temperature.
- Pan and oven"shallow" means a thin layer of batter, roughly an inch; one 8- or 9-inch pan will take it. Bake at 400F for 20 minutes, until a skewer in the center comes out clean.
- Topping and yieldFor a thick sprinkling, mix about 1/3 cup sugar with 1 to 2 teaspoons cinnamon. The single pan yields 9 squares; it is best the day it is made, as the original's "serve hot" suggests.