Great Gram's Crumb Cake
One bite and I’m back in my Grandma’s kitchen, having coffee and crumb cake and catching up on the family gossip.
I knew my Great-Grandmother for 21 years of my life. From her, I received a few of my most prized possessions and personality traits- among them my engagement ring, my addiction to coffee (at a very early age…) and this crumb cake recipe. Most of my memories of eating it are actually with my Grandma, her youngest daughter, and unequivocally one of my favorite people ever. She would always have this crumb cake made and frozen, ready to pull out when my family piled into her house for all sorts of occasions and needed breakfast the next day. And even today, when I use her house as a rest-stop on my way from somewhere to North Carolina and back. I always sneak an extra piece.
The original recipe, in my German Great-Grandmother’s handwriting with very specific instructions.
My Great-Grandmother lived in a house in Fairfax, VA for most of my life with her oldest daughter, my Aunt Ana Mae. She was originally born in Germany and emigrated here through Ellis Island. Before family brought them down to Virginia, they all grew up on Long Island making real whipped cream and pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin.
After my Great Aunt passed last summer, I came to be the proud owner of a huge box of family recipes- all in original handwriting on notecards or clipped from old New York newspapers. It’s my treasure chest. A few weeks after bringing it home to Alexandria, I opened it not looking for anything super-specific and my favorite crumb cake recipe fell right out of the middle of the huge stack of recipe cards.
This recipe is intensely nostalgic to me, but aside from that, it’s objectively simple, easy, and delicious. It’s as traditional of a crumb cake as they come- no fancy nuts, streusels or glazes with ingredients you need to go run and buy. This isn’t a towering coffee cake- slash pound cake - that you would impulse buy in the Starbucks line. It’s short in stature and can be cut into neat squares. It can be easily frozen and always kept on hand when you need a sweet treat or have an unexpected visitor.
Recipe notes from my Great-Grandmother: Have pan 10.5”x15.5” greased + floured and crumbs made before adding the beaten egg, milk and vanilla to the floured mixture for the cake. DO NOT BEAT. Just mix dough enough to wet the flour. Put in pan and add crumbs on top.
My (small) edit: I use a 1/4 sheet pan for this recipe which is a little smaller than the one she used. She and my grandma always called the pan a ‘jelly roll’ pan. A 1/4 sheet is 9”x13”x1” deep. If you don’t have a quarter sheet pan, any 9”x13” will be perfect. I find I like it better when the cake is slightly thicker and the top is fully covered in crumb. Plus, the cake layer is thin as it is and difficult to spread out on a large pan without overworking.
