A Bakehouse classic with Ashkenazi Jewish Roots
This is a Bakehouse classic and our most popular coffee cake. Rich and moist from the real sour cream made at Guernsey family dairy in Northville, MI, we load it with a distinctive cinnamon-nut swirl made with Indonesian korintje cinnamon, brown sugar and freshly toasted walnuts and then bake it in a traditional bundt pan. Available in two sizes, depending on the crowd you’re feeding, it’s very impressive and extremely delicious. And it lasts. A week or two later, on the counter, it will still be scrumptious and it freezes beautifully, for up to a month. Many Ann Arborites enjoy it regularly and send it to friends and family all over the country as holiday gifts.
One question we get a lot: why is sour cream coffee cake considered Jewish? Yeasted coffee cakes, baked in kugelhopf pans, were somewhat common in European baking generally. As was often the case, Ashkenazi Jewish communities adapted local cuisines and made them their own. Ashkenazi coffee cake, most often made with sour cream, dates back to 17th-century Eastern Europe. Prior to modern-day refrigeration, most milk was consumed in some fermented form. Thus, sour cream, along with buttermilk, became essential elements to traditional Ashkenazi Jewish baking.
Fast forward to 1950 Minnesota, when a group of Jewish women wanted to bring back some of the old Jewish coffee cake recipes. To be successful they needed the right fluted pan with the tube in the center (i.e. kugel
