Moravian Sugar Cake Recipe

Quickly after starting my analysis for this recipe, an electronic mail with the topic line “Moravian Sugar Cake” appeared in my inbox. I opened the message from my good friend Nan to discover a scanned handwritten recipe for Moravian sugar cake from an acquaintance who occurred to be a member of the Lilitz Moravian Church in Lilitz, Pennsylvania. Imprecise directions—“pat flippantly,” “gap it,” and “put extra butter”—had been scrawled throughout a sheet of dominated pocket book paper. “That is the outdated stand-by when the congregation bakes sugar truffles to promote,” Nan wrote.

Drenched in butter and topped with cinnamon sugar, the cake, which is comprised of an enriched yeasted dough, is usually described in cookbooks as a “yeast-raised espresso cake,” and although it has a cinnamon sugar topping that’s harking back to espresso cake, it’s barely chewier, with a dimpled sample that brings focaccia to thoughts. The candy is a staple at church fundraisers in Pennsylvania, with many bakers counting on decades-old recipes just like the one I obtained. Although Moravian sugar truffles are particularly fashionable at Christmastime, church buildings and bakeries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina make and promote the truffles year-round.

A Temporary Historical past of Moravian Sugar Cake

In a 2019 version of The Morning Call, Paul Peucker, a historian and archivist for the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, tells journalist Jennifer Sheehan that Moravian sugar cake recipes have been round for a minimum of 100 years—and sure even longer than that. Although nobody is aware of for certain, it’s doable the cake arrived with Moravians in the mid-1700s, once they made their means from Moravia and Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) to America. They settled in Bethlehem, Lilitz, Hope, and Nazareth in Pennsylvania, in addition to Bethabara in North Carolina, an space round present-day Winston-Salem the place many Moravians nonetheless reside in the present day.

The sugar cake is part of many Moravian celebrations, together with “schmaus,” a meal that takes place after Moravians embellish their church for Christmas. The cake can also be a mainstay at love feasts, Moravian church providers with songs and devotion which can be accompanied by baked items, espresso, and chocolate milk.

In line with a well-liked native folktale, Moravian males as soon as scrutinized the thumbs of potential companions earlier than they proposed: Greater thumbs meant sugar truffles with deeper dimples, permitting for extra butter and sugar to soak into the pastry, making it much more scrumptious. I promise, nonetheless, that it’s doable to make a superb Moravian sugar cake whatever the measurement of your thumbs. Right here’s how.

How one can Make Moravian Sugar Cake

Mashed potatoes are important. Sugar cake doughs sometimes embrace flour, granulated sugar, yeast, eggs, and—maybe in a stunning twist—mashed potatoes. Although it’s unclear why potatoes had been initially included, Sheehan notes it’s doable that potatoes, which comprise loads of starch and sugar, had been used to “increase the expansion of yeast,” serving to the dough rise quicker. The potato additionally provides moisture to the dough, and its starchiness offers the cake its comfortable, barely chewy texture.

A number of recipes name for from-scratch mashed potatoes, however in the present day, most bakers attain for fast mashed potatoes. “Though my mom used mashed potatoes and potato water [the water drained and reserved after boiling fresh potatoes], I take advantage of on the spot mashed potatoes,” says Pennsylvanian Pat Dimmick in Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook. “I’m satisfied that if earlier Moravians had on the spot potatoes, they’d have used them, too!”

Although my recipe under requires boiling and mashing a potato, on the spot mashed potatoes are a terrific substitute if you wish to save your self the effort and time. And when you have leftover mashed potatoes? Be at liberty to include them into the dough. Simply make sure to keep away from excessively seasoned potatoes, in any other case it’s possible you’ll find yourself with garlicky Moravian sugar cake.

Use a stand mixer. Crucial factor to recollect about this recipe is that you’re not making bread. This dough won’t kind a agency, elastic ball, draw back from the perimeters of the bowl, or go a windowpane test. As an alternative, the dough will resemble a comfortable, stretchy cake batter that is still cheesy after mixing, and can follow the mixer hook. Resist the urge so as to add additional flour otherwise you’ll end up with precise bread as an alternative of cake.

As a result of the dough is so sticky, it’s best to arrange this dough in a stand mixer. Should you don’t have a mixer, although, you should utilize a bench scraper to combine the dough and pull it up the perimeters of the bowl, an motion that serves as a makeshift mixer, shifting in a means that permits some gluten improvement with out the mess of kneading the super-sticky dough by hand. Simply comply with my directions within the notes under. 

Proof the dough—and regulate it. Because the dough proofs, the yeast consumes the starches and sugars, releasing carbon dioxide that then helps it additional rise within the oven. Control it, although, as over-proofing (which occurs when the dough has fermented for too lengthy) can lead to your cake failing to rise—or briefly rising after which collapsing—while you bake it. To verify in case your dough is prepared, moist your finger barely and press it into the dough. It ought to go away an indentation and spring again slowly. If it springs again instantly, give it a number of extra minutes after which take a look at it once more.

Create dimples together with your fingers. To create the cake’s signature dimples, I dip my fingers in melted butter, then gently press them into the dough. You don’t wish to press all the best way down—simply deep sufficient to create little pockets for the butter and sugar topping. (Because the cake bakes, the odor of cinnamon sugar will permeate your house, which is cause sufficient to make this.)

Drench the cake in butter. Crucial ingredient after potatoes? Butter—tons and many it—in each the dough and topping. There are a number of approaches to incorporating the butter into the cake’s topping; some bakers apply it with a pastry brush, whereas others place half-inch cubes of chilly butter within the dimples. Some cooks scatter freeform chunks and items of butter over the floor of the dough. 

Every of those strategies yields a barely completely different outcome; my most well-liked methodology is to drizzle melted butter over the unbaked dough. After filling the cake’s dimples with the cinnamon sugar combination, I take advantage of a spouted measuring cup to slowly pour melted butter over the dough, together with the cinnamon sugar–stuffed indentations. Because the cake bakes, the butter and sugar come collectively to kind satisfyingly crunchy tunnels within the dough.

How one can Serve Moravian Sugar Cake

I sampled this cake at each doable temperature—at this level I am fairly certain my physique composition is roughly 75% butter—and assume it tastes greatest whereas barely heat. Take pleasure in it as breakfast, a day snack, or dessert with espresso or tea.