Yeast Cake is a German coffee cake. A proper Yeast Cake is dense so it can be dunked into the coffee Germans so love, and it is marvelous with either coffee or hot cocoa, beer or wine. It is too dense and not sweet enough for tea. This kind of makes me sad because I love tea. My grandparents, afraid I'd never grow, made me drink tea and hot milk and refused to let me drink coffee or sodas so I never developed a taste for coffee. I drink it now and again, but only with lots of milk and sugar. Friends tease that I drink a little coffee in my milk.
Itzl loves coffee the way I drink it. He also loves hot milk with hazelnut flavoring in it. And he likes Yeast Cake with his milky coffee. He likes the Yeast cake broken up into the cooled coffee.
This is a failed Yeast Cake:
There's a trick to making Yeast Cake. It took me a long time to learn the trick because my grandfather never told it to me. He gave me the recipe freely enough. It's a fairly common recipe, actually. But it wasn't the ingredients that made the Yeast cake, it was the preparation of it.
Let me tell you the trick before I give you the recipe.
The Trick: You must use old, almost dead, yeast. It has to still have some life in it because you want a little rise, but not too much, and a nice lingering yeast flavor underneath. Fresh, vigorous yeast won't give you the right texture at all. The Yeast Cake will be - all the gods forfend! - fluffy, and light, and airy. This is all well and good for most cakes, but for Yeast Cake, you want flat and dense. When you proof the yeast, it must show some signs of life. Just barely. The Monty Python "I'm not dead, yet" yeast stirrings. If it froths up right away, all perky and youthful, use it in a nice ciabatta or focaccia. But if it arthritically develops a little reluctant froth you have a winning Yeast Cake yeast.
The really hard part is almost killing the yeast. I find the best way to tame a zestfully young yeast for Yeast cake is to chill it and use it as cold as possible, shorten the rise times, use a cold rise, and place it in the hot oven before it gets a chance to have a final rise. This is tricky to get right because you could so easily kill the yeast, or not let it rise enough to prevent that gummy layer from an under-risen dough.
Mind you, the failed Yeast Cakes are still yummy, they just aren't right. Go ahead and eat your failures and keep trying until you get the combination of nearly dead yeast and the proper degree of rise and oven bloom to give you the right density for this cake.
This is a proper Yeast Cake:
Now, if I haven't thoroughly intimidated you, here is the recipe:
Yeast Cake
1/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon dry yeast, elderly
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup warm milk
1 egg
1/2 cup cooking oil
1/2 cup sugar
4 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cold milk
Grease and flour a jelly roll pan. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water with a teaspoon of sugar. Beat in the warm milk, egg, cooking oil, and the rest of the sugar. Stir in 2 cups of flour and let it rest 10 minutes. Add in the rest of the flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 5 minutes. Let it rest 10 minutes in a warm place. Pat into the jelly roll pan, use a rolling pin to get into the corners. Use your knuckles to press dimples into the dough. Lots of dimples. Brush with the cold milk.
Bread Machine instructions:
Add the ingredients according to the directions for your machine. Mine has me put the wet ingredients in first, then the dry, so that's what I do. Choose the "dough only" setting. When the dough is done, pat it into the jelly roll pan. Use your knuckles to press lots of dimples into the dough. Brush the surface of the dough with the cold milk.
Top with one of the following toppings:
Butternut:
1 cup cinnamon sugar
3/4 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup chopped cold butter
Preheat the oven to 400*F. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the milky dough. Dot with the chopped butter. Sprinkle on the pecans. If your yeast is very old and sluggish, let the dough rest 10 - 20 minutes. If it's frisky yeast, pop it into the preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes.
Streusel:
2 cups flour
2/3 cup cold chopped butter
3/4 cup cinnamon sugar
dash of salt
Preheat the oven to 400*F. Cut all the ingredients together until crumbly and the size of small peas. Sprinkle liberally over the surface of the milky dough. For sluggish yeast, let the dough rest 10 - 20 minutes. For frisky yeast, pop it straight into thte hot oven. Bake for 25 minutes.
Fruit Topping:
3 - 4 pounds of your choice of fruits
1/2 cup soft bread crumbs
1/2 cup chopped almonds (or other nuts)
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar
Preheat the oven to 400*F. Fruit choices should be peeled, pitted, seeded, and sliced thin. Cherries, apples, plums, apricots, peaches, plouts, gooseberries, pears. Blueberries can be used whole. Strawberries should be sliced. Toss the fruits with the bread crumbs and lay over the mily dough, covering as much as possible. Mix the cinnamon sugar and the nuts together. Sprinkle all over the fruit. Sluggish yeast dough needs to rest 10-20 minutes, and frisky yeast can be popped right into the hot oven. Bake for 30-35 minutes.
You can also double up by sprinkling the streusel topping over the fruit topping.
Try to let it cool before slicing and eating.
I do not know how long this will keep because I've never had it get cold. People are walking in the door, some of them bringing their own coffee and snagging a slice and it's all gone before it has a chance to get cold.