North Carolina · Dessert
Moravian Sugar Cake
- Advanced
- 3 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- FOR THE DOUGH
- 250g mashed potato
- 120ml potato water
- 100g sugar
- 115g butter
- 2 eggs
- 7g instant yeast
- 500g flour
- 1 tsp salt
- FOR THE TOPPING
- 170g butter
- 200g brown sugar
- 2 tbsp cinnamon
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Proofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Warm the potato water and dissolve the yeast in it with a spoon of the sugar.
- Beat the mashed potato with the remaining sugar, butter, and eggs, then add the yeast liquid, flour, and salt to a soft dough. Knead briefly.
- Rise 90 min, then press into a buttered sheet pan and rise 45 min more. 90 min
- Dimple the surface all over with a floured finger and fill the dimples with pieces of butter and brown sugar mixed with cinnamon.
- Bake at 190C for 20-25 min until the dimples bubble with cinnamon butter and the cake is gold. 25 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes
- Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
- The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
- The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
- Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
- It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.
Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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