TOLEDO, Ohio — Check out this recipe for Placek, or a Polish coffee cake, as prepared by Ella Dudek on Good Day.
Ingredients
Coffee Cake
- 2 1/2 cups warm (85-90 degrees Fahrenheit) milk
- 9 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 3 whole eggs
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp lemon zest
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- 4 1/2 tsp rapid rise yeast (two 1/4 oz. envelopes)
- 6 1/2 cups all-purpose
- 1 cup raisins
Topping
- 2 cups confectioner's sugar
- Remaining dough stuck to the sides of the Dutch Oven
Preparation
- For coffee cake: Combine the warm milk, softened butter, sugar, eggs, salt, lemon zest, and nutmeg in a large Dutch oven. Whisk until smooth.
- Sprinkle the yeast over the milk mixture. Whisk until smooth again, then allow to sit for 5 minutes
. - Gradually add the flour to the milk mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon until combined. Dough should pull away from the sides of the pot, and be very sticky.
- Fold the raisins into the dough.
- Cover the Dutch oven with plastic wrap, and a clean towel. Allow to rise in a warm place, free from draft, until the dough rises nearly to the top of the pot; about 1 ½ to 2 hours
- Grease three (9 x 5 inch) loaf pans. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (F).
- Divide the dough into three equal parts, placing 1/3 of the dough into each prepared loaf pan. Dough will be very sticky, so you may want to lightly wet your hands with water before handling dough. Do not completely scrape the dough from the pot. The remaining dough that is stuck to the sides of the pan will be used for the topping. Try to level the dough in the pans.
- Prepare the topping: Dump 1 cup of the powdered sugar into the pot that the dough was in. Using clean hands, grab blobs of dough that were stuck to the pan, and toss into powdered sugar. Take a powdered sugar coated blob of dough, and rub vigorously back and forth between your fingers, to work in the powdered sugar, and crumble the dough into small pieces.
Once the first cup of powdered sugar has been worked in, add another cup and repeat the process, until all of the sticky dough has been cleaned from the pot, and the crumbles resemble coarse sand. (A 3rd cup of powdered sugar may be necessary.) A few larger chunks are fine, but the crumbles should be small. - Divide the topping into 3 equal parts, and sprinkle the crumbles evenly over the tops of the dough in the loaf pans.
- Allow dough to rise to the top of the loaf pans; about 1 hour.
- Place a sheet pan on the lowest rack, to catch any crumbles that fall off the cakes while baking.
- Then place the loaf pans on the center rack of the preheated oven, and bake the coffee cakes for 30-40 minutes, or until done. Topping will be golden brown, and loaves should be cooked through.
- Cool the loaves in their pans, and on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Gently run a knife around the edges of the loaf pans to loosen the coffee cakes. Once pans have cooled enough to handle, use a spatula to help lift the coffee cakes from their pans.
- Cool coffee cakes completely on wire racks, before slicing to serve.
- Cakes can be frozen if cooled completely before being tightly wrapped in plastic wrap, and then wrapped in aluminum foil.
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