Issue #147: Spiced Crumb Coffee Cake
Cake Time, A Use for Soured Milk, Jewish Food You Won't Find in the Bible
When Nate’s around we go through a lot of milk. Most of it ends up in his morning iced coffee. But a decent amount also gets chugged alongside any cake or cookie I might have made, or that he might have secretly bought and snuck into the cupboard, or, as is the case currently, into the freezer, where I just found two boxes of Girl Scout cookies.
If I don’t get the timing just right, when he isn’t here, the milk sits in the fridge and sours. The situation has gotten worse since we moved down the street from McNamara Dairy. I like to buy things there.
So, the other day, while Nate was away at a conference and some milk and half and half was souring in the fridge, I went looking online for a cake recipe that required a lot of sour milk. Although I will regularly substitute sour milk for any milk or really any liquid called for in any baked good, for some reason this time I was intent on finding a recipe expressly designed for it.
That’s how I happened on this Sour Milk Coffee Cake by @formerchef.
Although I immediately thought another name for the cake would be more appealing and descriptive—it is a crumb cake loaded with spices, sure the name should let on—I was intrigued. I love coffee cake.
What is a coffee cake some of you might wonder, especially if you are younger than 30? It is not a cake flavored with coffee, as a couple of millennials I know once assumed. A coffee cake is intended to be served with coffee—washed down might be more apt—presumably in the afternoon, though a good coffee cake makes a perfect breakfast, too #imho.
Whether the coffee accompaniment is necessary because coffee cakes are usually dry and crumbly, or the cake is that way because it is intended to be served with coffee, we may never know #chickenandegg. Suffice it to say, coffee cakes are usually dry and crumbly, in a good way. They are also often quite sweet, perhaps to counterbalance coffee’s bitterness. For some reason, for me, coffee cake conjures the flavor of cinnamon. Entennmann’s may be to blame for all of this.
Although you won’t find anything in Leviticus about coffee cakes, I think of them as Jewish. Perhaps that’s just because dry and crumbly were how I would describe most things on offer at the Ashkenazi bakeries in the Jewish neighborhood in Toronto, where I grew up. My mother and her girlfriends often kibbitzed in the afternoon over a slice of coffee cake.
But here’s the thing. You grow up and realize that all coffee cake does not have to be dry. Crumbly, yes. But if you don’t over bake them, coffee cakes can be moist and rich. Who knew?
Because I rarely can leave well enough alone, I messed with the original recipe—adding vanilla, butter, salt, and some whole-grain flour, and making a few other tweaks I think improve the flavor.
Sour milk wasn’t the only thing I had to use up this weekend when I made this cake. I had just baked a large batch of hamantaschen for Purim and I had a decent amount of prune filling leftover. I decided to swirl it in. This made the coffee cake even more moist and scrumptious.
And I changed the name.
Like many cakes, this one is delicious when first made, but it gets better as it sits (at room temperature) as the crumb compacts, the spices meld, and the butter flavor becomes more pronounced. We’ve been eating it all week.
RECIPE: Spiced Crumb Coffee Cake
(Serves 10 to 12)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 1/4 cups brown sugar, light or dark doesn’t matter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided
1 1/4 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cloves
1 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup neutral oil, such as grapeseed or peanut
2 teaspoons vanilla paste or extract
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
2 large eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cups soured milk or buttermilk
2/3 cup prune, apricot, or cherry filling, or 6 to 8 fresh Italian prune plums or apricots, split in half and pitted, or 6 to 8 fresh figs, split in half (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, sugars, 1 1/4 teaspoon of the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and salt. Mix with your hands or a whisk until blended. In a small bowl, stir together the melted butter, oil, and vanilla. Using your hands or that same whisk, move the dry ingredients around while you drizzle this butter-oil mixture into the bowl to form crumbs like wet sand. It should clump and there should be no dry patches when you are done. Set aside 1 1/4 cups of this crumb mixture in a small bowl (you can use the same one in which you mixed the butter and oil).
To the remaining crumbs, add the baking powder, baking soda, and the remaining 1 1/4 teaspoons of cinnamon. Add the beaten egg and soured milk and mix with a whisk just until no lumps remain, but not too much. (I find sugar lumps to be stubborn so they may need to be smashed on the side of the bowl with the back of a spoon to break up and dissolve.)
Pour this batter into the greased pan. If using fruit—either in the form of a filling or fresh—add it now. Place dollops of the filing around the top of the cake and with the tip of a knife swirl into the batter, as shown. Otherwise, arrange the fresh fruit evenly around the top, cut side up if using halves of plum, apricot, or fig. Sprinkle the reserved crumb mixture evenly over the top.
Place the cake in the preheated oven. With filling or fruit it can take up to an hour or more to fully bake. Start paying attention at 50 minutes or so. The center will be quite loose until it isn’t. Without any filling, the cake will take less time. Start checking at 45 minutes. To be sure it is done, insert an instant read thermometer in the center of the cake. It should read at least 200°F, and emerge without any batter on the probe. The cake may end up with a dip in the middle, which isn’t a problem as long as it is fully baked.
Remove from the oven and let cool on a rack for 30 minutes. Slip a knife tip around the edge and remove the side of the springform. Let cool completely before serving. Even better, cover and let sit a day at room temperature before serving.
We Midwest Jews didn’t know from Entemann’s. We just made do with Sara Lee, based in my little hometown of Downers Grove, IL. This cake is a great way to use up the flour before Pesach. חג טמח!!