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Coffee Cake (One cup brown sugar cup)
One cup brown sugar, cup molasses, half cup butter, cup strong coffee, one egg or yolks of two, four even cups flour, heaping teaspoon soda in the flour, table-spoon cinnamon, tea-spoon cloves, two pounds raisins, fourth pound citron. Soften the butter, beat with the sugar, add the egg, spices, molasses, and coffee, then the flour, and lastly the fruit dredged with a little flour. Bake one hour in moderate oven, or make in two small loaves which will bake in a short time. This may be made without the egg. - Mrs. D. Buxton.
This is a coffee cake in the older sense: a dark molasses-and-spice fruit loaf flavored with brewed coffee, not a streusel-topped breakfast cake. Handled as written it comes out closer to a light fruitcake.
- The fruit ratio is the thing to decide firstTwo pounds of raisins and four ounces of citron against four cups of flour is roughly twice the fruit of a modern spice loaf. Baked as written it is dense and barely holds together in slices; halving the fruit gives a cake most cooks today would recognize as cake.
- "Moderate oven"350F for a plain loaf, but with the full weight of fruit drop to 325F and expect 70-90 minutes. At 350F the sugar-and-molasses exterior darkens well before the middle sets.
- The coffeeStrong brewed coffee, cooled to lukewarm — not espresso, not instant granules undissolved. Along with the cup of molasses it supplies the batter's liquid, so measure a full cup after brewing.
- Soda and molassesThe heaping teaspoon of soda is there to react with the acid in the molasses, which is the principal acid here; swap in a neutral syrup and the cake will taste soapy and rise poorly. Sift the soda through the flour as directed rather than dissolving it in the coffee.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in tubs near the baking supplies at holiday time. Chop it fine. Candied orange or lemon peel is the closest stand-in by weight.
- Dredging the fruitTossing raisins and citron in a little flour before folding them in keeps them suspended instead of sinking into the bottom crust. Do it with flour taken from the four cups, not extra.
- Pans and yieldThis is more batter than one 9x5-inch loaf pan will take; the two small loaves the recipe suggests, in 8x4-inch pans, is the safer route, and they will be done well before the hour — start checking early. Line the pans; this much sugar and fruit sticks.
- DonenessA skewer will come out slightly tacky from the raisins even when the crumb is set — go by a clean center with no wet batter, and let the loaf cool fully before slicing or it crumbles.
- "Without the egg"The eggless version works because the fruit and molasses carry the moisture, but it is noticeably more crumbly. If you leave the egg out, use the smaller loaf pans.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks used "coffee cake" two ways: a yeast-raised cake to be eaten with coffee, and — as here — a cake with brewed coffee actually in the batter. The second kind belongs to the family of dark, thrifty molasses spice loaves that let a household lean on molasses rather than white sugar, and cold leftover coffee from breakfast cost nothing. Recipes of this type appear with some regularity in the decades after the Civil War, as roasted coffee became a more widely available household staple. The book is one of the Wilcox-family contributed-recipe compilations of the period, and Mrs. D. Buxton's entry has the shorthand of a cook writing for other cooks: no pan size, no yield, and a confident "bake one hour in moderate oven."