Jewish Coffee Cake Recipe & A Baking Fail (2024)

FAQs

Why is it called Jewish coffee cake? ›

Most coffee cakes are a version of crumb cake and there are endless versions of crumb cakes! It could be considered a Jewish cake because of the addition of sour cream, which is a popular ingredient in Jewish dishes.

2) Too much flour was used

Any baked good — especially cake —with too much flour will be dry, hard, crumbly … take your unhappy pick. For best results, please weigh your flour (and other ingredients).

The more you add, the more moist and fluffy it gets. However, at a certain point, you might increase the amount of butter so much that the cake starts becoming dense again and begin to fall into itself—eventually getting closer to the texture of a greasy brownie instead.

In the 1200s, the Jewish people weren't allowed to bake bread. This was due to the ties between bread and the sacrament. Poland was considered relatively progressive when it came to the land's Jewish population, and Jews were allowed to work with bread.

Known in Hebrew as 'ugat dvash', or 'lekach' in Yiddish, honey cake is one of the symbolically significant foods traditionally eaten at Rosh Hashanah in the hope of ensuring a sweet New Year.

Applesauce adds a pleasant depth and tartness along with a depth of flavour to your white or yellow cakes. If you want to experience those wonderful childhood memories of caramel apples, use applesauce in your caramel cake recipes.

Why Should I Add Simple Syrup to Cakes? Simply put, it keeps the cake moist throughout every stage of assembly and decoration. Not only does it help keep your cake moist, but it also helps to add sweet flavor which is always good!

Why does oil give cake superior texture? Butter is 18% water, so when the batter is baked, some of its liquid evaporates. Replacing the water from the butter with oil means there's more fat left in the cakes to ensure tenderness.

What to avoid while baking? ›

This can happen for several reasons: If your eggs are just slightly too cold, they may cause the soft butter to seize up, breaking the emulsion. Or if you rush while beating in the eggs, the emulsion won't be stable enough to hold in place.

If it's just little lumps butter, it will be ok to bake.

Likewise, it is possible to overbeat your mixture—if it starts to look soupy and oily, you've gone too far. This whole process typically takes between 2 and 5 minutes.

The first coffee cake likely originated in Germany, specifically in Dresden. However, the Danish came up with the earliest version of eating a type of sweet bread while drinking coffee, so coffee cakes really evolved from many different cultural traditions. We do know that coffee was introduced to Europe in the 1600s.

It was not until after the Civil War, when the impact of German coffee traditions grew more pronounced, that the term 'coffee cake' became commonplace in America. Americans initially used it to indicate a chemically leavened cake incorporating brewed coffee into the batter.

A common misconception is that German Chocolate Cake comes from Germany. In fact, the name comes from American baker, Samuel German, who developed a type of dark baking chocolate in 1852. The baking chocolate was then named Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate in honor of German.

Curiously, coffee cake contains zero coffee itself. I think (and I am totally speculating here) that it's meant to be served with coffee, sort of in the tradition of tea. My sleuthing on the internet points to origins in German yeasted cakes, but it's not entirely clear.