Thread by @bennstancil

We need to talk about coffee cake.

THREAD.

When I was 27, I learned that there's no coffee in coffee cake.

Everyone involved in this discovery was shocked. Other people might as well have told me there were no apples in apple pie. I might as well have said that I put motor oil in a cake. 2/

By now, I concede that coffee cake does not, in fact, contain coffee. But I'm still appalled - coffee cake is a cruel trick. Why? My argument is simple:

1. It's called coffee cake.

3/

Apricot jam is made with apricots. Blueberry cobbler is made with blueberries. Cinnamon toast crunch is made with cinnamon. Dill pickles are made with dill. Egg salad is made with eggs. I could do this forever. 4/

Other people say that coffee cake is a reasonable name. Of course it doesn't have coffee! But things get complicated when they explain why:

1. It doesn't taste like coffee.
2. Lots of food are named after things that aren't in them.
3. You eat coffee cake WITH coffee.

5/

Let's take these one at a time. 6/

First, sure, it may not taste like a 205° water poured over 42g of Colombian dark roast. But MY coffee of choice—a Dunkin' Donuts brown sugar cinnamon latte—sure tastes a lot like cake. 7/

And even if coffee cake doesn't taste like coffee, so what? Olive oil doesn't taste like olives. Almond extract doesn't taste like almonds. Strawberry Kiwi Capri Sun doesn't taste like strawberries (contains real juice!). walmart.com/ip/Capri-Sun-S… 8/

So what are we to believe, the inability of our fickle and subtle tastebuds, moonlighting as a sommelier, to find hints of coffee among layers of dough and sugar and cinnamon? Or the word, right there in the name? 9/

Second, there are 214 types of cakes listed on Wikipedia. 81 are named after an something after that could conceivably be baked into in a cake, like banana, or marble, or king. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c… 10/

If we throw out the things that hopefully aren't ingredients—so we're not chopping up plastic funnels for funnel cake—we're left with 53 cakes. 11/

Of these 53, ONLY 7 are missing the ingredient in their name. One is coffee cake. Four are named after animals, which, thankfully, they don't contain: Butterfly cake, caterpillar cake, frog cake, and goose breast (???) cake. 12/

The last two, teacake and Maderia cake, are the only ones that follow the coffee cake “rule.” But even these are confusing! Another type of tea cake, tea loaf, contains tea. And while Maderia cakes don't have Maderia, wine cakes have wine. 13/

Among the 48 cakes that are named after what's in them? Rum cake. Avocado cake. Orange and polenta cake. Beer cake. Cucumber cake. Applesauce cake. Onion cake. Tell me coffee cake makes less sense than any of these. 14/

Third, coffee cake should be named after coffee because you eat it with coffee? I eat cake with ice cream. So we could call all cake ice cream cake...but we can't, because there's already an ice cream cake. And it's made with ice cream. 15/

16/

We can fix this.

For the sake of everyone are trying to learn this language, and can't bear another I-before-E-except-after-C-but-never-trust-coffee “rule.” 17/

For the sake of children who are deprived of coffee cake by parents wanting to prevent a premature caffeine dependence but instead only deepen the eventual confusion about what's in coffee cake anyway. 18/

For the sake late-night drivers who get coffee cake looking for a caffeine pick-me-up only to find themselves fading from a cheap sugar high on the open road, miles from the next rest stop. 19/

It's time to end this nonsense. It's time for the truth. It's time to give coffee cake its rightful name.

#coffreecake.

/END