Where does Crumb Cake get their Name?
Crumb cakes get their name from their special topping—buttery pea-sized crumbs resting atop a fine-textured butter cake.
There’s crumb cake and there’s coffee cake, and in New York never the twain shall meet. Crumb cakes get their name from their special topping—buttery pea-sized crumbs resting atop a fine-textured butter cake. You can drink coffee with crumb cake, of course, but don’t call it coffee cake, a non-specific descriptive of just about any kind of cake to enjoy with coffee. The main difference between a New York Style crumb cake and any other kind is the size of the crumbs. To make them, you mix the topping ingredients until they gather into clumps, squeeze these clumps into uneven-sized balls, and pinch pea-sized pieces off onto the batter. The crumb layer is thick, and in some recipes it can even equal the thickness of the cake. I like a ratio of 1 part topping to 2 parts cake, because the cake is also a big part of the show. The cake should be moist, have a fine crumb—no large bubbles in the batter—and have strong vanilla overtones. The recipe here will do just that.