"CoffeeCake" news and stories

Happy Coffee Cake Day!

Thought to have originated in Central and Northern Europe in the 1600s, coffee cake takes its name from the logical pairing of sweet cakes with cups of warm coffee. The first "cakes" paired with coffee were much less complex than the coffee cakes of today and resembled bread more than anything else, sweetened with nuts, spices or dried fruit. But over time, as sugar became increasingly integrated into daily diets, the "cakes" were flavored with yoghurt, cheeses, sugared fruit, and various creamy fillings.

It wasn't until 1879 that the term "coffee cake" was coined, argues Stuart Berg Flexner in Listening to America, and it wasn't until the last decades of the 1800s that coffee cake recipes began to appear in American cookbooks, many of which even included coffee as an ingredient.

For tried-and-true classic recipes, as well as some innovative newer ones, peruse our list of recommended recipes:

• Cherry-Streusel Coffee Cake
• Sour Cherry Coffee Cake
  
• Cinnamon Croissant Coffee Cake
• Coconut-Pineapple Coffee Cake
• Lemon-Lavendar Coffee Cake
• Banana-Walnut Coffee Cake
• Cinnamon Coffee Cake Kotniuk

A former Slashfoodie herself, Nicole is the extraordinary baker behind Baking Bites -- a recipe blog for anyone with flour on their sleeves and a taste for the divine. She stepped away from the kitchen (actually, the horse stable) to chat with us a bit about life since Slashfood, and why her brownies are fudgier than mine.

What have you been up to since leaving Slashfood?
I write Baking Bites now. That's pretty much what I've been doing food-wise since I left Slashfood. It's not a very exciting answer.

So are you dedicating more time Baking Bites now?
Well, before I wrote for Slashfood, I had a blog for a couple of years called Baking Sheet, which I updated a couple of times per week. I kept that going while writing for Slashfood, but after I left, I changed the name of the site and made it more formal. I dedicate more time to my personal blog now than I did while I was writing – and before I was writing – for Slashfood.

It's clear from reading about you that you love to cook everything, so why a site mainly baking?
Because I like baking. All cooking is great, but for me, baking is really interesting. I like the flavors and how everything comes together. I love the magic and the science of the oven. Cooking for me is ... I don't want to say it easier, because I don't find baking difficult, but it is just not just as interesting to me usually. You can go from grilling a chicken to grilling a steak, but baking a cake is a little more special.

Anything happening in the kitchen today?
Not at the moment. Last night I made a lemon cake and later I might make some flatbread. The flatbread isn't set in stone yet. I'll make a list of things that I want to make but it changes. I'll get a whim for something with mint or vanilla and I'll totally change my mind.

Source

• Mini foods are in! Including burgers, blini, and pudding.
• When will herring get respect?
• There's more than one kind of salt in the world (you can even post your thoughts in the Do You Love Salt forum).
• A Sicilian antipasto photo gallery.
• It's only October, but that doesn't mean you can't have Thanksgiving in a Pan. Though it's turkey mixed with brussel sprouts and onions...does that really make it Thanksgiving-ish?
• How to make your own bacon.
• This week's recipes: Cinnamon Coffee Cake, Gambian Peanut Stew, Marinated Zucchini Slices, and Quinoa-Stuffed Squash.

Now that you have finished your cake, let's review the steps. You read your recipe carefully, preheated the oven, made the streusel, greased the pan, creamed the butter, added the eggs, finished the batter and baked it. It's time to taste it.

The cake is moist, rich and delicious. It isn't a light, spongy cake, but it is very tender and does not seem heavy or dense. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a cake with this much streusel on it – in fact, there was nearly as much streusel as batter in the recipe! I loved how simply pressing the streusel mixture into big chunks before spreading it on the cake resulted in professional looking and tasting topping. Aside from the hitch with the incorrect baking time being given in the recipe, I didn’t have any problems and found the recipe to be easy to follow. This cake is a little too rich for everyday breakfast, but it is a great choice for special occasions and is classic comfort food. The recipe says this serves 10-12, but I far prefer to cut it into 16 smaller slices.

Thanks for watching this "episode" of Cooking Live with Slashfood!

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Put your finished cake into the preheated 350F oven and bake. Martha's recipe says that this will take only 50 minutes, but mine took quite a bit longer, which is hardly surprising given the size of the cake. Perhaps it is not the ingredients or method, but instead the baking time that causes people so many problems when they are working with recipes published by Martha Stewart Living. It is also possible that more people enjoy raw cake batter than I previously imagined. Unless you, too, enjoy raw batter, I suggest that you always perform the "toothpick" test or simply bake until the cake springs back to make sure that your cake is finished. When a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, it is done.

After the cake has cooled slightly, you need to turn it out of the pan and onto the cooling rack. Run a sharp knife around the around the outer and inner edges of the pan. Remove tube portion with cake attached. Run knife over the bottom, loosening the cake. Gently replace cake in pan high-sided pan, which will support it as you turn it upside down. Place a clean dishtowel on top of pan and a baking sheet on top of that. Carefully flip pan over, turning cake out onto the baking sheet. Reinvert onto wire rack. Allow to cool completely.

 Once the cake has baked at 350F for 60-70 minutes and a tester has come out clean, you're almost done. Move the cake to a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes. After loosening the cake with a knife, carefully turn it out onto a baking sheet and reinvert it onto you wire cooling rack. Cool completely.

There is only one more things to do.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]