Kaffee und Kuchen (afternoon coffee cake)
Streuselkuchen — yeasted cake with butter crumble topping
FestiveDocumented🍯moyen2 h 30 (with rising)
A soft brioche-like dough topped with a thick layer of streusel — crispy crumbs of butter, sugar, and flour. Warm, with strong coffee, it is the very taste of the German Sunday.
Why this dish? The afternoon coffee-and-cake ritual punctuates the bourgeois and academic life of Wilhelmine Germany. Wegener, who 'regularly drinks coffee and tea,' shared this break over a Streuselkuchen, a Sunday cake and family gathering staple.
On Sunday, after services, one cannot receive without a Streuselkuchen on the table. All the art lies in the crumbs: you work cold butter with your fingertips together with flour and sugar until you form large golden clumps — above all, do not knead them into a dough! You spread them generously, and into the oven. With a cup of good coffee alongside, one forgets for a moment the quarrels of my learned colleagues.
Ingredients
- •Wheat flour — according to batch (base for dough and streusel)
- •Baker's yeast — a little (leavening)
- •Milk — a cup (dough liquid)
- •Butter — a good lump (richness and crumbs)
- •Sugar — to taste (sweetness, streusel)
- •Eggs — one or two (binder)
How it was made : A specialty of Silesia that became national, the Streuselkuchen was baked on large trays in the Sunday oven, or even at the neighborhood baker who rented out his oven after the bread batch. The generous crumb-to-dough ratio marked the quality of the household.