If you like coffee cake, you’re going to want to try this old fashioned Cinnamon-Sugar Coffee Cake recipe. This vintage recipe is worth the effort.
Coffee cake is one of those things. It’s comforting and familiar and perfect for breakfast. This one, made from a recipe from the 1930s, has a dense crumb and an irresistible buttery cinnamon sugar topping.
No, it’s not that impossibly fluffy and almost-dessert-sweet coffee cake from the grocery store. But it doesn’t want to be. It’s a totally different coffee cake — one that stands up to the fork without squishing into oblivion and that can be eaten by hand without crumbling all over. And it’s really great with a hot, steaming cup of coffee.
It is coffee cake after all.
Making this, I wasn’t sure if the vintage sensibilities would make it a winner for us. But it was. Hugely.
I whipped it up for a brunch with friends last weekend where the cake quickly vanished. Seriously, not a trace was left behind. Good sign, right? And it was so good that I baked another just for our family.
Back to the brunch for a second. Though I adore brunch, I don’t have people over (or go out) for it nearly enough. So I was thrilled to have a little one at my house. The brunch menu was simple — bagels and lox with all the fixings, scrambled eggs, berry and pineapple fruit salad and this Cinnamon-Sugar Coffee Cake.
In the course of the conversation, I shared that this was a vintage recipe — something dug out of my great collection of early 20th-century cookery books, pamphlets and recipe cards.
This recipe comes from the third edition of All About Home Baking, published in 1936 (the original was published in 1933) by the General Foods Corporation, a now-defunct company whose products (Calumut baking powder, Post cereals, Maxwell House Coffee and General Foods International Coffees, to name a few) live on. I bought this hardcover book off eBay a while back.
My friend asked about my interest in vintage recipes, which really got me thinking about why I have been so into pre-1960s cookery. I made this conscious decision to reclaim lost cooking techniques because I feel like as the reliance on prepared, prepackage and shortcut based cooking has grown, we’ve lost some of the skill and technique that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers used in the kitchen.
To them, making a quick coffee cake for breakfast or brunch or whatever was just that. It was simple, uncomplicated and easy.
And when I find a winner — like this coffee cake — I love to share it.
All told, this recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Coffee Cake takes about 30 minutes to make — maybe 40, if you include the cooling time. And most of that time is totally hands-off (making the dough for the cake takes maybe 5 minutes).
Be warned, instead of a batter this really makes a crumbly dough. Don’t worry if it doesn’t form a ball — you just need all the ingredients to have come together before you press it into a pan with floured hands.
And don’t change a thing about the buttery cinnamon-sugar topping. It’s the best part. (Aren’t topping always the best part?)
You can do this. Dust off that cake pan this weekend and give this Cinnamon-Sugar Coffee Cake recipe a try.
Yield: 8 servings
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes
recipe from All About Home Baking, 1936
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
6 tbsp butter
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
Topping:
1 1/2 tbsp melted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9-inch cake pan all over the inside with a little butter.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Cut in the butter using a pastry cutter or two knives.
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and milk until light and frothy.
Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir well until all combined. The dough will be somewhat stiff, but keep stirring until everything is incorporated.
Transfer the dough to the prepared pan. Using floured hands, gently pat it down into one even layer.
Brush the top of the coffee cake with melted butter. Then, stir together the sugar, flour and cinnamon for the topping. Sprinkle all over the top of the coffee cake.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out cleanly. Let cool for five minutes in the pan. Then, gently loosen the sides with a butter knife. Turn out onto a plate and then turn back onto a serving plate.
What Are Vintage Cakes? Vintage cakes are vintage or “retro” because they've been around (and around and around) for centuries. They're known for their frilly, over-piped design and can be traced back to the French Rococo style of the 1700s – an age known for its ornate and gilded designs.
With immigration on the rise during the 1800s, Dutch and Germans traveled to America, taking with them their family recipes for this tasty dessert. By 1870, coffee cakes had exploded in popularity in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware and changed from sweet bread delights into a pastry treat.
American Coffee cake evolved from other sweet dishes from Vienna. In the 17th century, Northern/Central Europeans are thought to have come up with the idea of eating sweet cakes while drinking coffee.
The main difference between the two cakes is the amount of streusel topping. Crumb cake has a thicker layer of streusel topping than coffee cake. Coffee cake can also be made without the streusel topping.
Vintage cakes are usually made with buttercream frosting using traditional piping techniques such as swirls, shrills, drop loops, shells, lace, basketweave and frills. Use the detailed piping guide to achieve that elegant Victorian age design.
Coffee cake and regular cake are made with the same ingredients like flour, sugar, eggs, and butter and a leavening agent like baking powder. The difference is that instead of frosting on top, coffee cakes have crumble or streusel. Just like a cake, it can also have glaze or icing.
A buckle is a funny name for an old fashioned fruit studded coffee cake. Like many other desserts in the extended cobbler family buckles take their name from their appearance—grunts grunt as they cook, slumps slump when served, buckles—you guessed it—buckle.
What is the shelf life of the cake? The cake remains fresh for 14 days from date of shipment when stored on the kitchen counter or in the refrigerator. Refrigeration does not add to the shelf life of the cake. All cakes freeze beautifully for up to twelve months, either whole or sliced.
Even when a teacake is a cake, it usually is in a circular shape unless it was baked as a loaf cake. Coffee cakes come in squares, rectangles, bundts, circles, basically whatever shape pan the baker had available.
Food historians agree that the tradition of coffee cake originated in Northern Central Europe sometime in the 17th century, marrying the introduction of coffee to Europe with an already-rich history of cake and pastry-baking.
The name “king cake” comes from the Biblical story of the three kings who bring gifts to Baby Jesus. A blend of coffee cake and cinnamon roll, king cake is usually iced in yellow, green and purple – the colors of Mardi Gras -- and is frequently packed with fruit fillings and decadent cream cheeses.
This is a cake breaker. This is from the 1950s. This is actually used to cut angel food cake or sponge cake because if you use a regular knife and you cut down on it, it pushes the cake down because it's so delicate and soft.
One person on Twitter summed up our thoughts on the trend by simply saying, "Vintage style fairy garden cakes are so so so so so so so so pretty!" In an interview with Elle Australia, a Sydney-based baker named Tash says people are drawn to this particular style of cake because they are "a combination of nostalgia, ...
A spoiled cake that has gone bad will have an “off” odor, something a little sour or musky. If your cake has changed colors in any way, it may be on its way out the door. You can especially see this when your cheese cake frosting starts to get yellowed at the outer parts.
The world's oldest known cake, baked during the reign of Pepi II in Egypt between BCE 2251 and 2157. Alimentarium, Vevey, Switzerland. The Egyptians gave us the world's oldest known cake–and also the world's oldest Tupperware as it happens.
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