Category: Desserts

Georgia’s Raspberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

Until she retired a few years ago, Jerri was an active member of the St. Croix Valley Music Teachers Association. The members are professional music teachers and performers, and most meetings feature a program of interest to people who believe that music is an important part of education.

But lest you think that music teachers are concerned only with symphonies, operas, art songs or other types of classical music, consider the fact that members took turns to provide a homemade dessert for attendees at each meeting. In addition to making sweet sounds in the studio, music teachers make sweet treats in the kitchen.

One day Jerri was so impressed with the dessert that she came home with the recipe jotted down on the back of the meeting agenda. It was a coffee cake made by Georgia, one of Jerri’s friends who taught piano in Ellsworth, Wisconsin.

INGREDIENTS:

For the streusel topping and cake:
2 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup margarine
1/4 cup butter
1 large egg
3/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp. almond extract
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

For the topping:
8 oz. soft cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese
1 tsp. almond extract
1 large egg
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup raspberry jam
1/3 cup slivered or sliced almonds

PROCEDURE:

First, soften a package of cheese. Preheat the oven to 325º and grease a nine by nine by two-inch baking pan.

Next, make the topping and batter. Start by stirring the flour and three-fourths cup of sugar together and cutting in the margarine and butter as if you were making a crumb mixture for biscuit dough. Set aside one cup of the mixture to use as part of the topping.

Mix the salt, baking powder and baking soda into the crumb mixture. Beat one egg until it is lemon colored. Beat the egg and a teaspoon of almond extract into the sour cream, then beat the liquid into the crumb mixture. Beat vigorously until you have a smooth, thick batter. Spread the batter evenly into the greased pan.

Next make the topping by stirring another egg and a second teaspoon of almond extract into the cream cheese. Stir in a quarter cup of sugar and beat until smooth and creamy. Spread the mixture over the batter.

Use a teaspoon to dab small globs of raspberry jam evenly over the cheese mixture, then sprinkle with the reserved crumb mixture and top everything with the slivered almonds.

Bake for about an hour. Test for doneness at fifty-five minutes by pressing gently with the tip of your finger near the center of the cake. If the cake springs back it is done.

NOTES: With a teaspoon of almond extract in the batter and another in the topping, this coffee cake reminds me of one of my favorite Danish pastries, but it is much easier to make. Just remember to reserve a cup of the crumb mixture before you begin adding the liquids.

Georgia’s recipe called for for cream cheese, but I prefer to use Neufchatel cheese whenever possible, since it has less fat. When I made this coffee cake, the ladies at Jerri’s bridge group said it tasted good, so the Neufchatel appears to be fine in this recipe.

Georgia noted that you can use other jams or preserves if you wish. Blueberry might be a good choice.

Real Ice Cream

I had my first taste of something approaching real ice cream when I was seven or eight years old. We had moved into the country about four miles north of Hayward, but the milkman from West’s Dairy still delivered our milk twice a week just as he had in town. It was whole milk that had not been homogenized, just like God gave it to us from the friendly cows of Wisconsin.

One very cold morning, when I went to the front porch to bring in the milk bottles, I found them with the paper caps pushed out of the bottles and globs of frozen cream rising out of the tops. Mom explained that when the milk began freezing ice crystals formed that took up more space in the bottle than the milk. The cream in the milk had risen to the top, and the freezing milk pushed the cream out the top of the bottle.

With a teaspoon she gave my sisters and me a taste and had a little herself. It tasted wonderful, and I still judge every scoop of ice cream by that sample I enjoyed so long ago. That’s when I learned that real ice cream is basically frozen cream. Just consider what the name means.

I am not saying that I don’t enjoy many different brands and styles of ice cream available in shops and stores, but only a few are real ice cream. Unfortunately, many are made with chemicals that reduce the need for cream, slow the ice cream from melting or extend its shelf life.

If you want to test whether a commercial ice cream is real, let a little of it melt in a bowl. If the melted liquid looks like half and half or whipping cream, all is well. If it resembles something in the bottom of a paint can, there are a lot of strange chemicals in that puddle.

Making ice cream is easy if you have an ice cream freezer. We never had one when I was growing up, so Mom experimented with no-crank recipes using condensed milk as well as cream. I remember watching her carefully stirring half-frozen ice cream in those old aluminum ice cube trays with the removable dividers. It was a treat, but it didn’t compare with the ice cream from West’s Dairy in Hayward.

When West’s stopped delivering milk to customers in the country, we had to pick it up at the store in Hayward. One time, when I was eight or nine, Dad sent me in to buy the milk while he waited in the car. As I recall, a half gallon cost something like forty-seven cents. I am sure about the seven, because he gave me two pennies plus a couple of quarters.

When I got in the car, I was on top of the world, because the clerk had given me the pennies back along with the nickel change. This prompted my father to give me a lecture about honesty. “You know that is not your money, so take those pennies back in and explain that she made a mistake.” So I did, and I never forgot that lesson.

Incidentally, West’s Dairy is still making good ice cream in the same building on Second and Dakota in Hayward where we bought our milk. Jeff Miller bought the dairy with his partner in 2005 from Bruce West, who took over the business when his father retired. Jeff just published Scoop, a memoir about their first year in Hayward. It’s a fun read about living in a small town with some memorable passages involving people who resemble characters I knew sixty years ago.

But back to making real ice cream. After we received a hand-crank freezer from our best man and his wife at our wedding, we became serious ice cream makers. For the first few years of our marriage we lived in Virginia and Kentucky, two states where you needed to make your own ice cream if you wanted the real stuff.

Today we have an electric ice cream freezer, and we make ice cream only once or twice each summer. There are dozens of recipes for ice cream. Ours is simple.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups whipping cream
2 cups half and half
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
Dash of salt
Ice
Salt

PROCEDURE:

At least three hours before you plan to make the ice cream, whisk together the cream, half and half, vanilla extract and salt. Put the mixture into the refrigerator to get it good and cold.

Put the freezer canister and beater into the freezer of your refrigerator a half hour before you plan to start making the ice cream.

Follow the directions you got with the freezer to pack the freezer with ice and salt to turn the cream into ice cream.

Eat and enjoy.

NOTES: Real ice cream is good plain, but fresh raspberries, strawberries or peaches don’t hurt. Topping a couple of scoops with homemade hot fudge sauce is another good way to go.

Some recipes call for more vanilla. Ignore them. You want to taste the cream.