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Coffee Cake
1 cup scalded milk
1 cake yeast softened in ¼ cup
¾ teaspoon salt warm water
⅔ cup sugar
1 egg
4 tablespoons shortening
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° F. Serve hot.
A yeast-raised coffee cake in the German style, soft enough to pour rather than knead. The ingredient list is set in two columns in the original and runs together in transcription; read it as milk, yeast in warm water, salt, sugar, egg, shortening, flour, and sugar and cinnamon for the top.
- The hinge: keep it a batterThe instruction to pour into the pans is the key. Two cups of flour to a cup of milk gives a slack batter, not a dough, and adding flour until it handles like bread dough will produce a dry, bready cake. Resist the urge to firm it up.
- One cake yeastA household cake of compressed yeast was commonly about 0.6 oz, though sizes varied. One packet of active dry or instant yeast (2¼ teaspoons) is the usual working equivalent. Soften active dry in the ¼ cup warm water as directed; instant can go straight into the flour.
- Scalding the milkScalding was standard with raw milk, and was held to destroy something in it that weakened dough. With pasteurized milk it is unnecessary, though heating and cooling to about 110°F is a convenient way to get the milk to the right temperature for yeast.
- The saltSalt appears in the ingredients but never in the method. Add it with the sugar and egg at the second stage; putting it into the initial sponge with the yeast will slow the rise.
- A sweet, slow spongeTwo-thirds of a cup of sugar is a lot for two cups of flour, and sugar retards yeast. The first rise of the flour-and-milk sponge should be genuinely foamy and "very light" before the sugar goes in, and the later rises will be slower than a plain bread dough — expect 45 minutes to an hour and a half each, depending on room temperature.
- Pans and oven"Shallow" means about an inch of batter: one 9-inch round or square pan, or two 8-inch pans for a thinner cake. The 400°F stated is accurate for a modern oven; twenty minutes is right for a single shallow pan, and a thicker one will need closer to 25 to 30.
- The toppingSprinkle the sugar and cinnamon after the final rise, as directed — doing it earlier draws moisture and dulls the crust. Roughly ¼ cup sugar to 1 to 2 teaspoons cinnamon covers a 9-inch pan; dots of butter under the sugar give the crackled top most people expect from a streusel-less coffee cake.
- YieldOne 9-inch cake, eight to nine servings. The original directs that it be served hot.
"Coffee cake" here means a cake to be eaten with coffee, not one flavored with it — the sense carried by the German Kaffeekuchen, the yeast-raised, sugar-and-cinnamon-topped sheet cakes associated with German and Central European immigrant kitchens in America. Commercial compressed yeast, sold in foil-wrapped cakes, was widely available by the time this book was compiled. The later American habit of leaning on baking powder and a crumb topping — the coffee cake most readers now picture — largely displaced versions like this one, which is closer to the plain, thin, cinnamon-crusted Blechkuchen of a German bakery than to anything from a box.