Last week I was looking for some baking inspiration in the Los Angeles Times' archive of Culinary SOS Columns. I was intrigued by a column from 1994 where a reader wrote in, "If I were dying, I would want the coffee cake served in the junior and senior high school cafeterias in Los Angeles as my last meal. Do you, by chance, have the recipe?" According to the column, this coffee cake has been served in the L.A. Unified School District since 1959. It hardly seemed plausible that anything served in a public school cafeteria could evoke such feelings of devotion. I had to give the recipe a try.
The recipe is not difficult -- you cream together butter and sugar, add an egg and vanilla, and then alternately add in the dry ingredients (cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder) and sour cream. You spread half of the batter into a tube pan, sprinkle on some sweet nut topping (flour, brown sugar, salt, butter, and walnuts -- although I used pecans instead, because I was out of walnuts), and then spread on the rest of the batter and topping.
This recipe does not produce much batter, so the baked cake doesn't have much height; the fact that the recipe indicates that a cake baked in a 10-inch tube pan produces only eight servings is not altogether unreasonable. I was a little skeptical about how this cake would taste, since it doesn't include any cinnamon -- in my mind, coffee cake includes cinnamon topping. I was pleasantly surprised at how tasty it was. The cake is nicely moist, and the brown sugar topping was very flavorful and had a nice crunch from the pecans. I was even more pleasantly surprised to discover that the leftovers tasted better on day three than on the day the cake was baked -- the cake crumb seemed to become more tender and delicate over time.
Now I'm not going to say that this cake is last-meal-on-earth worthy. But it certainly is an above average coffee cake and way better than anything I ever ate in the school cafeteria when I was growing up. The L.A. Times printed this recipe back in 1994 and I seriously doubt that LAUSD is still serving this cake in schools, given the focus on trying to make school lunches more nutritious to reduce childhood obesity. LAUSD announced a few months ago that they would stop offering flavored milks in cafeterias; if they're not going to let kids drink chocolate milk (which at least has some nutritional value), I don't think they're going to let kids eat cake (which, let's face it, has no nutritional value). While that's perfectly understandable, it's also a bit of a shame -- there is something so sweetly nostalgic about the idea of lunch ladies serving kids yummy cakes baked from scratch.
Recipe: "1959 City School Sour Cream Coffee Cake," from the January 27, 1994 Los Angeles Times.
The recipe is not difficult -- you cream together butter and sugar, add an egg and vanilla, and then alternately add in the dry ingredients (cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder) and sour cream. You spread half of the batter into a tube pan, sprinkle on some sweet nut topping (flour, brown sugar, salt, butter, and walnuts -- although I used pecans instead, because I was out of walnuts), and then spread on the rest of the batter and topping.
Now I'm not going to say that this cake is last-meal-on-earth worthy. But it certainly is an above average coffee cake and way better than anything I ever ate in the school cafeteria when I was growing up. The L.A. Times printed this recipe back in 1994 and I seriously doubt that LAUSD is still serving this cake in schools, given the focus on trying to make school lunches more nutritious to reduce childhood obesity. LAUSD announced a few months ago that they would stop offering flavored milks in cafeterias; if they're not going to let kids drink chocolate milk (which at least has some nutritional value), I don't think they're going to let kids eat cake (which, let's face it, has no nutritional value). While that's perfectly understandable, it's also a bit of a shame -- there is something so sweetly nostalgic about the idea of lunch ladies serving kids yummy cakes baked from scratch.
Recipe: "1959 City School Sour Cream Coffee Cake," from the January 27, 1994 Los Angeles Times.
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