German Coffee Cake recipe

Over the weekend I was going through my recipe books for cake-inspiration and found this German Coffee Cake recipe by Jamie Oliver.

In his introduction Jamie says that this is his homage to the German or Saxon Streuselkuchen. This translates to a crumb cake because of its beautiful crumble-like topping over a spongy cake. He then added three types of coffee to make this coffee cake.

 

Here is his recipe for a German Coffee Cake:

Recipe

Streusel

150g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

150g plain flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

100g golden caster sugar

Caramel

100g caster sugar

½ teaspoon granulated instant coffee

Sponge

225g unsalted butter (room temperature)

225g golden caster sugar

4 large eggs

225g self-raising flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

50ml espresso (cold)

1 teaspoon granulated instant coffee

2 tablespoons Camp coffee

Method

Preheat the oven to 180˚/350˚F/gas 4.

Grease and line a deep baking tray (30cm X 35cm), and line another baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Make a caramel by sprinkling the sugar into a small non-stick pan with a splash of water over a high heat and leaving for a few minutes (swirl it gently but don’t stir).

Once golden, sprinkle in the granulated coffee, then pour the caramel into the greaseproof paper-lined tray and leave to cool and set.

For the streusel, cube the butter and put into a bowl with the flour, baking powder and sugar, then rub together with your fingertips until you have fine crumbs. Place in the fridge to chill until needed.

Next make the sponge batter. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs one-by-one, then fold in the flour and baking powder with a metal spoon.

Mix in the cold espresso, granulated and Camp coffees, then transfer to the deep lined tray and smooth out into an even layer.

Smash up the caramel into small bits and mix with your chilled streusel mixture.

Rustically sprinkle half of it over the sponge batter from a height, then get the other half of the mixture and squeeze and clump bits together with your fingers.

Drop these in and around the sponge as well – it’s a rustic finish, so being uneven is all good.

Bake for around 35 minutes, or until golden and cooked through.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Pop the kettle on, then slice and serve with a cup of coffee/tea.

 

This cake is absolutely delicious. I unfortunately didn’t have golden caster sugar, so I used demera sugar (blitzed it in the food processor for a finer texture) as well as some normal white caster sugar. Also I didn’t have Camp coffee, so I just used more of the other coffees, which I think did have an impact on the taste. The crumbly and caramel bit on top sank through the sponge, but it didn’t have any effect on the taste.

We had it as a dessert with ice-cream. First warm-up the cake again so that the caramel melts into the sponge. Because the crumbly bit didn’t stay on top of the cake, it made me think a little bit of sticky toffee pudding, with the added taste of coffee. Gorgeous.

Enjoy.