Heritage Recipe #3: Mrs. Warner's Coffee Cake

My Grandma Dorothy's house in Vancouver, Washington, was one of the few familiar and comfortable places I had in the U.S. during my childhood. When we came back from Kenya on furlough, we would often stay with her for a while, and during that time I adjusted to American culture and got ready to enter public school for a year or travel with my parents to visit churches or do whatever else we happened to be doing for our season away from home. It was a good house to be in during the difficulty of transition.

Outside, I loved the rock garden, the willow tree, the grassy spaces for cartwheeling with my cousins, the little crooked woodpecker door knocker. Inside, my sanctuary was the yellow bedroom filled with treasures from my mom's growing up: boxes of dolls with stiff eyelashes and perfectly crafted homemade dresses, children's books with my aunts' names scrawled inside the covers, and photo albums.

Another favorite part of the house was the laundry room, because it was where Grandma kept tins of cookies and freshly baked coffee cake. Besides the Faasch smile (lots of gums exposed), one thing I inherited from my grandmother was her sweet tooth. Even in her later years, "what's for dessert?" was a common question. And truly, a meal does feel unbalanced without dessert.

When my grandparents were first married, my grandpa pastored a church in California. Mrs. Warner was an elderly lady in their congregation who took my young grandma under her wing and taught her, among other things, how to make a fantastic coffee cake, a recipe that's still in our family. Soft and lemony with crumbly cinnamon topping...oh my. Despite the fact that Grandma made it with stewed prunes on top, I loved it even as a kid.

Here's the recipe:

Just kidding, I can't read that either. Here's the recipe, with a few modifications:

Mrs. Warner's Coffee Cake

Ingredients

2 cups milk, warm to the touch
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 package yeast
1 egg, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
grated rind of one lemon
about 5 cups flour
1 cup raisins (optional - I opt not to use these)

For the crumb topping:

2/3 cup brown sugar
4 teaspoons cinnamon
6 tablespoons flour
6 tablespoons butter

fruit is an optional topping as well




Directions

Dissolve a pinch of sugar in 1/4 cup warm water and stir in yeast to activate. Let it sit about 10 minutes (the surface will be frothy when it's active).

Mix milk, butter, yeast, egg, sugar, salt, grated lemon rind, flour, and raisins in a large bowl. The dough will be very soft and sticky, so use a spoon rather than kneading it. Cover the bowl with a towel or saran wrap and let the dough rise until doubled in bulk, about two hours.

Grease three 9" round baking pans and put the dough in the pans. (I don't have rounds, so I used one 9x13 baking dish, as shown in the picture above. The dough kind of overwhelmed the dish, but the doughiness turned out pretty delicious in the end.)

Mix the topping ingredients to crumb consistency with a fork and sprinkle on top of the dough. I also like to stew dried apricots in a saucepan for about 10 minutes and put them on top of the dough before adding the crumb topping.

Then let the dough rise again, until it's roughly near the top rim of the pans, maybe an hour or so. Bake at 375 for 23-25 minutes.

It's good stuff. I'm sure Grandma D is agreeing with me from heaven. ;)