Streuselkuchen (German crumb cake)

A traditional German crumb cake. I’ve adapted this recipe over time from Hefe-Streuselkuchen (vom Blech) with tips from my Papa.

Ingredients

For the dough:

• 200g milk, warmed to 90-100°F
• 80g sugar
• ~2g yeast (~1 tsp)
• 500g all purpose flour
• 2g salt (~¼ tsp, a large pinch)
• 2 eggs
• 100g butter, softened

For the Streusel (crumbles):

• 250g butter
• 400g all purpose flour
• 250g sugar
• leftover dough after rolling out/trimming into a rectangular shape

Toppings:

• ~½ cup heavy whipping cream: You pour this over the cake just after baking to keep the Streusel softer and give a more cheesecake-y texture. I highly recommend this, but it’s not necessary.
• Fruit: Enough to cover the entire cake. It also depends a little bit on how dense you want to layer the fruit. Here’s some guidance for different kinds of fruit:
  • Small berries (raspberry, blackberry, blueberry): Lay out berries in a single layer, otherwise they can end up too soggy. You need about 36oz of berries, i.e. 6 small berry cartons or 3 big ones to cover the entire cake.
  • Plums, peaches: You need enough fruit where you could cover roughly one third the surface of the cake uncut. For a 9x13 baking sheet this is ~20 plums or ~12 peaches. You want to partially overlap thin slices (sixteenth’s) of plums/peaches because otherwise they dry out a little bit too much while baking.
  • Cherries: Place in a single layer. You need to pit/halve the cherries which is a lot of work. A ~2 lb bag of cherries should be enough to cover the cake with halved cherries.
  • Apples: I haven’t tried this yet, but it sounds good, perhaps especially if you add cinnamon to the Streusel.
  • Strawberries: I haven’t tried this yet. I would cut up into smaller pieces and then lay them out like raspberries.
• You can omit fruit, but the resulting cake will be drier and not as complex. If you omit fruit, you may want to add ~1 tsp of vanilla to the Streusel to add flavor

Instructions

Prepare the dough:

1. Warm milk, add sugar and yeast. Proof the yeast for ~10 minutes till you see bubbles to make sure the yeast is alive.
2. Add eggs, flour, and salt then knead until the dough forms a smooth ball
3. Integrate the softened butter kneading until the dough is uniform.
4. Let rise until doubled (~2 hours at 70°F)
5. Roll out the dough into a uniformly thick 9x13in rectangle.
6. Line a 9x13in baking sheet with a silicon mat or parchment paper. This is important for making it easier to remove the cake in one piece when done baking.
7. Place rolled out dough into the baking sheet trimming excess for use in the Streusel.
8. Let the dough rise for 30 minutes while preparing the fruit and Streusel.

Prepare the toppings:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F
2. Combine Streusel ingredients until uniform
3. Prepare the fruit. See details for particular fruits above.

Assemble and bake:

1. Layer fruit on the cake. Wetter fruits like berries should go in a single layer so that the cake doesn’t get too soggy. Drier fruits like plums should be layered on top of each other so that they don’t get too dry.
2. Crumble Streusel over the top of the cake. Avoid pieces with diameter larger than 1in.
3. Bake for 25 minutes at 350°F then up to 5-15 more minutes until the Streusel are turning golden brown.
4. Remove cake from oven and transfer to a cooling rack. You can insert a spatula underneath and then pull out by the silicon mat/parchment paper.
5. Drizzle ½ cup cream (up to 1 cup is okay) over the cake while hot to keep the Streusel soft longer, and make the cake richer.

Cut into squares to serve.

Photos

Here’s some pictures to show you what it looks like once it leaves the oven + layering fruit.

When bringing somewhere I cut off the edges which are slightly drier.

The plums ended up being a little bit too dry layered like this, aim for a little more overlap.

This is probably as dense as you’d want to go with berries.