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America's Melting Pot
Boiled Coffee Cake hero image coming soon
1870s-present - American home bakers adapting coffee-table cakes with brewed coffee and molasses
Older American coffee cakes sometimes actually contained coffee. Recipes using cold boiled coffee, molasses, raisins, and spice appeared in late-19th and early-20th-century cookbooks, making a sturdy loaf cake for the coffee table.
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Difficulty
Easy
Prep time
20 minutes
Cook time
50 minutes
Total time
1 hour 10 minutes
Servings
10 slices
Region
United States home baking
Era introduced
1870s-present
Introduced by
American home bakers adapting coffee-table cakes with brewed coffee and molasses
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In modern American usage, coffee cake usually means a cake served with coffee, not one flavored by coffee. Older recipes blur that line. Some late-19th-century formulas used cold boiled coffee as a liquid in spice cake, often alongside molasses, raisins, cinnamon, allspice, or nutmeg. This recipe follows that older idea: a dark, fragrant loaf cake that would have kept well and paired naturally with a cup of coffee.
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