Culinary Conquest Completed: Austrian Tea Cake

As you probably already know, I live near a very small city, and in that small city, there is but one real bakery. Ever since I moved here nine years ago, people have been extolling the virtues of said bakery, but I never could understand why. Almost everything I had there was no better than what you could get at the local supermarket, and in fact, the cakes at Price Chopper were better! There were only two things at this local bakery that I thought were excellent—a pecan coffee ring (kind of like a round Danish) and something they called Austrian tea cake. A friend of mine, herself a very talented baker, told me that she worked at this bakery for one day once upon a time, but she quit after her first shift. She was horrified that much of the products that they used were of poor quality, such as those prefab fillings that you buy in long, plastic tubes. And the cakes were all made ahead of time and frozen for months, then defrosted and re-moistened with simple syrup. When I asked her about the pecan coffee ring and the Austrian tea cake, she confirmed that these were some of the very few things there that were homemade from scratch.

Recently, our local bakery that had been run by the same family for generations was sold to another owner, a Polish baker, as I’ve heard the story told. But I am sad to report that the quality does not seemed to have improved, because the new baker’s philosophy (via a quote in the local paper) is along the lines of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But it is indeed broken, and though he promises some changes over time, they can’t come soon enough to suit me! Of course, I bake my own stuff, so I don’t really have the need to frequent a bakery too often. And there is always Montreal with its endless numbers and varieties of European-style delicacies just an hour away. However, I sure would like to be able to be able to make that tea cake for myself at home!

I have searched online many times for something by the name of Austrian tea cake, but I always ended up finding cookie recipes. Then I ran into a posting on some German baking site from someone in Plattsburgh looking for the same recipe. I emailed her to see if she’d had any luck. Interestingly, she had some sort of relation by marriage to the previous owners of the bakery (everyone is someone’s cousin in Plattsburgh!), but even so, they could not be compelled to divulge the secret family recipe. Boo hiss. But she did discover one important clue…that the cake was soaked in a buttermilk and butter glaze. Ah-ha! The Austrian tea cake was always very moist and rich, having clearly been soaked in some magical solution. But I didn’t know what. A buttermilk glaze—of course! The cake has that characteristic tang that I should have recognized as buttermilk.

So with some additional Googling of various similar cakes finished with a soak of buttermilk glaze, I tried to fashion something close the original. Though I produced a couple of very tasty cakes, they weren’t quite right. So I back-burnered that project for (interestingly) almost exactly one year to the day, when out of the blue, the same nice lady emailed me to let me know that she had finally wrangled the recipe out of the original owner of our local bakery. However, the recipe was on a MASSIVE, bakery-sized scale, and it was written in weighted measurements. It also did not include the buttermilk glaze. So I set myself to task, cutting down the recipe for home use, converting the measurements, and adding a glaze that I thought would work well. Moreover, my policy is that everything can be improved with nuts, so I added some, but you can omit them if you want to stay close to the original cake. SUCCESS at last! This tea cake is quick and delicious—in fact, you don’t even need to dirty your big mixer for this, as it can easily be mixed up by hand. Who needs to go to a bakery, anyway?


Buttermilk and Toasted Walnut Tea Cake

For the cake:
2/3 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/8 teaspoons salt
1 3/4 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 cup toasted walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped (optional, but highly desirable!)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a large bowl, whisk together the sugars, oil, and eggs until thick and smooth. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Add the vanilla to the wet mix, then alternate the dry ingredients and the buttermilk in thirds. Toss in the toasted nuts, if using, and mix just enough to combine. (Another option instead of nuts would be to add a good amount of poppy seeds. I may have to try that version next time!)

Spray a 9x13 dish with flour-added baking spray. Pour in the batter, and rap on the counter to remove most of the bubbles. Bake at 375 degrees for fifteen minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 250 degrees and bake for another 45 minutes or until the cake is evenly browned all over, the top springs back when touched, and the edges pull away from the sides of the pan.

Let cool on a rack for a few minutes while you prepare the buttermilk glaze.

For the glaze:
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) butter
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In a small saucepan, combine the buttermilk, sugar, butter and baking soda. Bring to a full boil (watch out—it will foam up!), and then turn off the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Using a bamboo skewer, poke the warm cake all over with small holes. Spoon the glaze evenly over the cake (start with about half then see if it will absorb anymore--you won't use it all), then let it cool completely on the rack. The cake can be eaten just like this, or preferably, frost the top with your favorite frosting*. Store leftovers covered in the refrigerator.

*I used about a half a batch of this recipe (without any Cool Whip).

Follow-Up 6/2/13: This recipe works great (maybe even better) as cupcakes! It makes 24 or 25 with the batter filled 3/4 of the way up two cupcake tins lined with individual baking papers. Bake for 15 minutes at 375, then another 20-25 minutes at 250. Prepare only half the buttermilk glaze, and spoon one teaspoon over each cupcake.