How Is Coffee Cake Different From Crumb Cake?

On April 7th, National Coffee Cake Day gives us a reason another reason to linger over a cup of joe. We can also break out some of our favorite recipes and deliver a heartwarming, home-baked item to a friend or two. As many bakers know, coffee cakes take very little time to make and bring a lot of satisfaction to both the baker and the receiver.

Coffee Cake is intended to be eaten while enjoying a cup of coffee, maybe for breakfast or during a coffee break.  One may choose to serve this cake to guests around their coffee table.

• 1400s – The invention, evolution, and popularity of cake begins in Egypt and gains widespread acceptance in Germany.
• 1598 – The words coffee and tea were first mentioned in English in 1598 in a translation of the travels of a Dutch navigator Jan Huyghen Van Linschoten
• 1600s – Coffee is introduced to Europe for the first time and is consumed by the general public.
• 1632 – The first coffee house outside the Ottoman Empire opened in Livorno, Italy, in 1632, the first in England was in Oxford in 1650.
• 1676 –  The first coffee house in America, the London Coffee House, opened in 1676 in Boston.
• 17th Century – The Danish came up with the earliest versions of coffee cake.  Around the 17th century in Europe, it became the custom to enjoy a delicious sweet and yeasty type of bread when drinking coffee beverages.
• 1850 – Coffee cake is referenced in literary material.
• 1879 – According to the book Listening to America, by Stuart Berg Flexner, it wasn’t until 1879 that the term “coffee cake” became a common term.
• 1887 – Streuselkuchen began appearing in small German bakeries in the Northeast and Midwest. The ‘Streusel Coffee Cake’ in A Book of Cooking and Pastry by C.F. Pfau (1887) is the first record of the word streusel in an American cookbook.
• 1889 – Reflecting the language and culinary changes afoot in America at the time was Aunt Babette’s CookBook (1889) by Bertha Kramer, an author from a German-Jewish background.
• 1914 – By the time of the First World War, US cookbooks started to feature German coffee cake, and by the 1920s, it was labeled under its own headings in recipe books.
• 1950s – The hole in the center of most coffee cakes is a relatively recent innovation—it became popular in the 1950s.  This “bundt pan” was invented to allow heavier batters to get cooked all the way through without any dough left unbaked in the center.
• 1960s – some cookbooks solely dedicated to this type of cake were published – indicating its mass appeal in the US.
• 1965 – The popularity of coffee cakes spreads throughout New York, New Jersey, and Delaware as a result of immigration.
• Coffee cake was not invented, rather it evolved from a variety of different types of cakes.
• Cakes in their various forms have been around since biblical times, the simplest varieties made from honey or dates and other fruits.
• The coffee cake itself does not contain any coffee.  They are usually single-layer cakes made in square, rectangle or ring-shaped pans.
• Coffee cakes are often flavored with cinnamon or other spices, seeds, nuts and fruits, such as blueberries or apples. Typically they have a crumb topping or a glaze drizzle.
• There are many available combinations, everything from blueberry coffee cakes to cinnamon walnut coffee cakes and more.
• The first coffee cakes are thought to have originated in Germany. These were more like sweet breads than cakes.
• In Hungary, a type of coffee cake is aranygaluska, which utilizes cinnamon.
• The Subtle Difference Between Coffee Cake And Crumb Cake. The difference between the two cakes is subtle, often confusing pastry lovers, and lies in the quantity of that irresistible streusel crowning the cakes.
  • Streusel is a crumbly topping often made from butter, flour, cinnamon, and brown sugar.
  • On the coffee cake, the streusel is sprinkled on sparingly
  • A crumb cake is all about the streusel

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Foodimentary

National Today

Perfect Daily Grind

The Food We Know

Tasting Table