welcome my friends to week one of a series about cake. today we start with one of my favourites coffee cake
history
like most foods, coffee cake is an item that evolved over hundreds of years and across continents. People had been preparing honey cakes since biblical times. Gradually the French came up with galettes, the forerunner of the ubiquitous Christmas fruitcake. Galettes also lead to the invention of sweet yeast rolls that eventually resulted in Danish coffee cakes, which really did contain coffee, by the way.
For some reason, the Dutch and Germans in New York, New Jersey and Delaware became particularly famous for their coffee cakes. Their recipes from the colonial times are very similar to those used today. Meanwhile Scandinavians had introduced their versions as well as the concept of the coffee break — for which we are all ever grateful. The British have their own version that includes toffee.
By 1879, coffee cakes were well-known in America and there were already countless recipes for crumb cakes, streusel cakes and streusel/crumb-cake combinations. Streusel cakes have that swirl of cinnamon/brown sugar throughout the while crumb cakes have a topping of crumbly flour, sugar and butter and cinnamon. However, food purists know that most Americans have these terms confused. Streusel (pronounced STROI-zuhl in German) means “granules” and actually refers to the crumb topping, not the swirl. Whichever way you pronounce it, the effect is still the same — delicious.
So there you have it, the story of how coffee cakes came to be the popular cake that we like today. Now I don’t know about you but I suddenly have this urge to get me some coffee cake!
recipe
Preheat the oven at 160C, 325 F,gas 3.Baseline and grease two equally sized sandwich tins. Add the sugar and the butter to a bowl and whisk until very fluffy and a pale cream.
Wisk the eggs in a mug with a fork and then add them gradually to the mixture with 1 tbsp of flour each time. Make sure you don't use all the flour.
Add the rest of the flour and the baking powder to the mixture and fold it in gently.
Dissolve the coffee in the boiling water and add to the mixture still folding. Divide into the sandwich tins and cook for 30 minutes
Meanwhile Cream the butter and the icing sugar until light and fluffy. Dissolve the coffee in boiling water, making sure you don't add too much water or the icing will be runny and add it to the butter and icing sugar. Whisk and leave in the fridge until the cake is done.
Once the cakes are done and have been put onto plates spread the icing on the bottom of one of the cakes (leaving around half of the icing for the top) and spread the strawberry jam ont the bottom of the other. Spread the remainig icing ontop of the cake. decorate with cherries or walnuts. ENJOY!
