Me: Hey Holly, do you want to try some coffee cake?”

Holly: “Yuck, no, I hate coffee, so I am sure I won’t like it.”

That’s a memory of me trying to get one of our new servers to sample the coffee cake so she could better sell it to customers. I eventually explained that it didn’t contain any coffee. She gave it a try, and it became one of her favorites.

It was a favorite of many of our customers, including the woman who said it made her feel like she was eating something someone\\\’s grandmother made at a church social. To me, that’s the highest praise for the things that I make. I grew up with Grandmothers who baked, and I appreciate the love and attention that went into their food and try to put that into the things I make too.

Knowing that I would be busy with the restaurant, I wanted something I could prep the night before and have ready to throw in the oven first thing in the morning. This recipe fits the bill.

Getting to work 2 hours before we opened soon became the norm, so I only made it the night before for a short time. The recipe is so easy to assemble quickly that it wasn\\\’t necessary to make it ahead of time.

Initially, we had issues with consistency. Sitting in the refrigerator overnight, the batter would not always rise as expected. We also discovered that if the baking soda were too old, the cake would fall, even if the batter hadn\\\’t been in the refrigerator overnight. I researched baking to find a solution, as I didn\\\’t have much experience with it. I substituted yogurt and butter, adding flavor and stabilizing the batter. Self-rising flour also made the recipe much more stable and quicker to assemble, allowing us to make it consistently, no matter who made it.

Below is the recipe we perfected and used in the restaurant. We used half hotel pans to bake the cakes at the restaurant. For home baking, you can use a 13”x9” pan to get a thinner cake with more crunch on top or a 9-inch round pan for a thicker cake.