Free – food and drink recipes

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As you are getting your morning caffeine fix, have you ever wondered how coffee cake came to be? After all, it often doesn’t have coffee in it. It tastes just fine without java. Somebody had to come up with it, didn’t they?

Like most foods, coffee cake is an item that evolved over hundreds of years and across continents. People had been preparing honey cakes since biblical times. Gradually the French came up with galettes, the forerunner of the ubiquitous Christmas fruitcake. Galettes also lead to the invention of sweet yeast rolls that eventually resulted in Danish coffee cakes, which really did contain coffee, by the way.

The custom of eating some sweet yeast bread while drinking one’s coffee probably began in the 17th century in Europe. Dutch, Scandinavian, French and German immigrants all brought a recipe for some sort of breakfast bread when they came to North America. All the recipes used flour, eggs, yeast, sugar, nuts, spices and dried fruit and probably were more bread- than cake-like. Over the years, people experimented with those recipes and began adding creamy fillings, cheese, yogurt and sugared fruit.

For some reason, the Dutch and Germans in New York, New Jersey and Delaware became particularly famous for their coffee cakes. Their recipes from the colonial times are very similar to those used today. Meanwhile Scandinavians had introduced their versions as well as the concept of the coffee break — for which we are all ever grateful. The British have their own version that includes toffee. Many Americans now enjoy a slice of coffee cake with a cup of coffee from their high-tech one cup coffee pot.

By 1879, coffee cakes were well-known in America and there were already countless recipes for crumb cakes, streusel cakes and streusel/crumb-cake combinations. Streusel cakes have that swirl of cinnamon/brown sugar throughout the center while crumb cakes have a topping of crumbly flour, sugar and butter and cinnamon. However, food purists know that most Americans have these terms confused. Streusel (pronounced STROI-zuhl in German) means “granules” and actually refers to the crumb topping, not the swirl. Whichever way you pronounce it, the effect is still the same — delicious.

Many of today’s coffee cakes are made with a Bundt pan (a ring with a hole in the center). The Bundt pan is actually a fairly recent innovation: It was created in 1950 by H. David Dalquist of Nordic Ware. Two of his customers, Jews, told him how they missed the heavier European cakes they had grown up with but needed a cake pan with a hole in it. The holes allowed heat to penetrate the heavier batter and did not leave unbaked dough at the center. The women showed Dalquist a ceramic kugelhopf pan and he made a similar version in all-purpose aluminum. However, while kugelhopf pans are spherical with folds like a turban, Dalquist introduced fluted folds into the fluted edges and patented the design.

Coffee cakes are a delicious way to start your day and a delicious accompaniment to any beverage. Next time you have a slice, think of the rich history you are sampling.

Concentrating on the topic of single serving coffee maker, Rob Carlton is publishing essentially for http://www.coffee-espresso-maker-tips.com . You can find his abstracts on one cup coffee pot and single serving coffee maker on his site.

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When you want the absolute best cup of coffee that you can get, where do you normally go? Do you head down to your local coffee shop for fresh brewed coffee? Or, do you have the right equipment at home to brew the freshest cup? If you enjoy making coffee at your home, then you might want to consider getting a coffee grinder. A coffee grinder will give you the freshest coffee possible because you will be able to buy the beans whole and then grind them when you are ready to use them. If you have never used a coffee grinder, now is the perfect time to find out how one of these little tools in your kitchen can help give you the best possible cup of coffee each day

What does a grinder do? There are many different types of grinders available to you on the market. When you grind your coffee beans at home, it will give your coffee less exposure to the air, thus providing you with the freshest grounds possible. The other great thing about using a coffee grinder is that you can grind only the amount of beans that you will use. You can store the rest and keep it fresh for your next cup of coffee. When you use a grinder, you will place the beans into a receptacle, which will pass the beans through a blade or other tool to give your beans the right texture for brewing. There are three types of grinders that you can choose from and of these three types of grinders the prices can range from very inexpensive to quite pricey. If you have never used a grinder before, or you plan to use your grinder only occasionally, then there is no reason to spend hundreds of dollars on a grinder. Your best bet is to find one that is functional and inexpensive.

A look at the types of grinders: When you get ready to invest your money into a coffee grinder, you will be able to choose from a crusher, blade or a burr grinder. The blade grinder is probably the most popular and the cheapest. However, you should keep in mind that this type of grinder really only cut your beans into very small pieces. This can produce pieces of beans that are inconsistent in size. The size of your copy granules will be important to the flavor and consistency of your brewed cup of coffee. The best type of grinder is a crusher with the burr grinder following in second. The crusher actually crushes the beans in the uniform granules for easy and optimal brewing.

As you begin to look for a coffee grinder, you will want to keep a couple of things in mind. First of all, you will need to make sure that your grinder is made solidly. Good construction is the key to a long-lasting coffee grinder. Second of all, you will want to make sure that your coffee grinder is easy to clean. The parts should remove easily and you should be able to put it back together with ease. Last of all, you should think about the noise. A coffee grinder can be quite noisy, so look at several different models to determine which one fits your needs.

Leroy Calstard publishes especially for http://www.coffee-espresso-maker-tips.com , an online site on the topic of coffees . You can see his comments on cappuccino maker over at http://www.coffee-espresso-maker-tips.com .

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