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Cinnamon Bread
Work one tablespoon of butter and the white of one egg, well beaten, into two cups of raised bread dough, kneading it with just as little extra flour as will permit handling it; form into a broad flat loaf in a cake-pan and let it rise; it should not be over two inches thick after it has risen; now spread over the top a generous layer of butter, sugar and cinnamon mixed together and bake for half an hour; sprinkle with powdered sugar, cut into squares and serve with hot coffee and plenty of butter. This may be made into a dessert by laying over the top of the cake apples cut in thin slices, then spread with the cinnamon and butter mixture.
This is a sheet cake built on bread dough rather than batter, so the hinge is the dough itself: it must be soft, well risen, and pressed thin enough that the sugar-and-butter topping stays on the surface instead of sinking.
- "Raised bread dough"Two cups of risen white bread dough, roughly 1 lb. In a household that baked its own bread this could be a piece taken off the day's batch; a bag of supermarket frozen bread dough, thawed and risen once, behaves much the same way.
- Working in the enrichmentButter and beaten egg white make the dough slack and sticky. Knead only until they disappear, adding flour a spoonful at a time — the instruction to use "just as little extra flour as will permit handling" is the difference between a tender crumb and a bready one.
- Pan and thicknessA "cake-pan" here is presumably a shallow round or square tin, 8 or 9 inches. Press the dough out to roughly an inch; the two-inch limit applies after the second rise, which may take 45 minutes to an hour in a warm kitchen.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350–375F for the specified half hour; the topping sugar will scorch above that. It is done when the edges pull from the pan and the centre reads about 190F.
- The toppingNo proportions are given. About 3 tablespoons soft butter, 1/3 cup granulated sugar and 1–2 teaspoons cinnamon covers a 9-inch pan. Dot and spread it rather than pouring it, and leave a narrow margin at the rim so it does not run down and weld the cake to the tin.
- Powdered sugarConfectioners' sugar, added after baking while the cake is still warm. Powdered sugar of the period was often more coarsely ground than modern confectioners' sugar, so use a light dusting through a sieve.
- The apple versionSlice the apples no thicker than 1/8 inch and press them into the risen dough in overlapping rows before adding the butter mixture, or they will not soften in half an hour. Firm cooking apples hold their shape best; expect to add 5–10 minutes.
- YieldA 9-inch pan cuts into nine or twelve squares. It is at its best within a few hours of baking — dough-based cakes stale quickly.
This resembles the German family of yeast-raised sheet cakes known as Butterkuchen or Zuckerkuchen, with the apple variant corresponding to Apfelkuchen. The technique of enriching a piece of the day's bread dough with butter, sugar and an egg, then pressing it flat and dressing the top, suits a period when yeast dough was set at home regularly and a cake could be had without starting from scratch. The instruction to serve it with hot coffee and plenty of butter is consistent with the coffee-and-cake habit associated with German immigrant cooks, though the recipe itself carries no such attribution.