Coffee and Cake

The people who did it have died.

I grew up in NY suburbs, 1960s, 1970s.

Morning and afternoon frau thing.

OP, are you Frank Costanza?

Yes it wasn't just after dinner or even mostly after dinner. Maybe in the summer, because it was still light outside.

Coffee Klatsch was after the kids were in school and hubby at work.

Before my time, but I'd love to revive the practice.

But in my neighborhood the timing could be random. My mom quit smoking really early in the 1960s, but I like the smell of cigarettes and coffee when neighbours visited.

Coffee cakes used to be a really big thing, but they've fallen out of favor. They were versatile and could be served for breakfast, an afternoon snack, or dessert with dinner. Housewives loved them.

I tend to eat dinner later. As I was on my back patio two weeks ago enjoying a drink about 7, I noticed a couple who live in the neighborhood coming up to the porch of my next door neighbors. They were coming for drinks/coffee and cake or nibblies. The next door neighbors are in their seventies.

Oh my little lamb; hon, it was code for swinger parties

Key parties!

Coffee and Italian pastries for my Northeast 1960s/70s family.

Afternoon or after dinner or Sunday.

Sometimes planned, sometime impromptu.

I miss a good bakery.

All the time.

My Italian American family always had Entenmanns in the house in case anyone stopped by.

If it was planned we made a quick run to the bakery.

Serving cak

Coffee percolator. I have a 71yo friends who still uses a percolator.

PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT CAAAAAKE!!!

Poor Fudgie

You mean literal cake?

Yes, literal cake. I’ve read it was a Northeast thing.

When I was very young in 70s and early 80s. Houston suburbs.

My god, these poor people didn't have the internet or smart phones! Can you even imagine! Is that a life worth living?

But coffee cake wasn't for dessert, it was either for breakfast or to have with afternoon coffee (the Germanic equivalent of the British tea.)

R21 the cake didn’t have to be coffee cake.

And sometimes friends would just drop in…..

Yes, I remember. My Aunt's used to call it Coffee And..... usually on a weekend, but always on a holiday. There was usually a small group for dinner, then other folks came over later for dessert....that was called come for Coffee And.....I

Growing up in the 60s and 70s in a RI Italian family, my mother (and grandmother) invited family over for 'Coffee and..' That left the option open for cake (my mother's coffee cake was the best) or Italian pastry from our Italian bakery. Percolator coffee ! I think it disappeared sometime in the 80s.

Ohio, 60s-70s. Mom baked a cake every Thursday and a pie or two on Saturdays. You never knew when an aunt and uncle, grandparent, or neighbor would stop by for coffee and dessert. I remember it happened at least once a week, but I’m old and could be having exaggerated recollections.

I think this tradition died out when women joined the 9 to 5 workforce...

12 AMERICAN recipes for your exotic Nordic Ware Bundt Cake pan.

Im sure some of boys clambered for the "Tunnel of Fudge" Bundt Cake.

Samantha Stephens was always frosting a cake in her kitchen for 'no special reason' other than to have a dessert on hand in case Mrs. Stephens, Ant Clara or Louise Tate dropped by. Sometimes she offered the first Mrs.Kravitz a slice with a cup of coffee.

This is timely. I have a crumb cake mix I've wanted to make and incorporate apples (I have a tree that's finally got ripe apples on it!) into it, so I found a recipe I plan making this weekend.

However, I'm such an introvert that the only person I know who would eat it is probably going to be busy all weekend. I'm going to make it anyway and take it over there.

R31, if the screen door is open, but you hear nothing but a low sinister hissing from the shadowy interior, leave the cake on the porch and get out of that yard quickly and with great stealth.

My mother never put out anything for anyone. People would stop over and after a while she'd ask if they wanted some coffee (they'd have to ask for sugar and cream). Just a selfish, stingy bitch.

My mother always served burnt champagne and the wrong caviar when Auntie Dominique came to visit ! Fuck that 'coffee and' shit !

I do remember those days, OP. I was very young, but I remember my mother serving cake and coffee to visitors, and sometimes being served when we visited someone's house. I constantly bake cakes and offer homemade baked goods and tea (can't stand coffee) to visitors. People say it makes them feel special. And why not? They are my friends! I expect people will call me an old fool, or a boomer, but I don't think people visit with friends at home nearly as often as they should. You get to talk -maybe have some music on in the background - and get away from screens and 24-hour news cycles, and all of that. A relaxing cup of tea and a delicious snack with a side of conversation is like medicine for your soul.

I’m from the South and although we didn’t have coffee and cake, I remember my grandparents born in the 1920s taking me over to their friends’ houses. We would sometimes call but a lot of times we would just knock on their door and they would invite us in for visit time.

It originally was a German tradition, Kaffee und Kuchen, brought to the US by German immigrants. It was the German equivalent of the British afternoon tea.

The custom died out when women joined the workforce and didn't have the time or inclination to bake cakes from scratch. Weekend kaffeeklatsches seem to have been replaced with champagne brunches and afternoon gossip hour over a bottle of Stella Rosa.

We did that as youths in Europe. Plus cigarettes.

We used to do this all the time!

I remember a weekday staying with either grandmother often involved going to a neighbor’s house for coffee/tea and a “baked good”, or neighbors stopping by. This was in the afternoon when the housework was finished, but before dinner prep got started. I was always ignored and left to my own devices. I peeked in a lot of cabinets.

Growing up, I had a neighbor who looked like the American Greetings character Maxine. She would invite me over for cookies, petit fours, and iced tea. We would talk about Are you being served and her antiques. She also pointed out that I was effeminate.

Another North East Italian American here - grew up in the 70s. As others have stated, OP, there were various scenarios - but the underlying value was that when people were in your home you offered them something, and it was common for people to drop by "I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd knock" - so you always had something on hand to offer - cookies, crumb-cake, whatever. My mother only baked for our birthdays, but we too always had some Entenmanns and Stella D'Orro in the kitchen. It wasn't just for company - but mom made sure it never ran out

It would be considered rude not to offer, but it was usually not seen as rude to drop by unannounced - usually in the afternoon before people started cooking dinner. If it was a bad time, you could say so at the door and neither side was put out; it was just how people socialized back when you didn't have access to a phone when not at home.

In my neighborhood of small single family homes it was also a carryover from the way my parents generation had grown up - in apartments where people socialized with neighbors all the time - on the stoop, kibitzing out a first floor front window or sitting on lawn chairs on the sidewalk. Now some people get put our if you actually do call on the phone instead of sending a text. Things change.

Stella D’Oros 🤤

And if a friend miscalculated and did ring the bell during dinner, the common script was your mom invited them to join, they apologized and declined, you father insisted, and then everyone moved over and they sat down at the table.

Instead of coffee and cake at home now it’s Stanley mug concealed wine and cannabis gummies at junior’s soccer game.

My grandmother, who lived with us, used to buy a slab of coffee cake every Thursday for us to eat for the next couple of days. People might or might not come over to visit We lived in Northern New Jersey. Much later in life, I learned that it was known as New Jersey coffee cake (AKA crumb buns).

I remember those crumb cake slabs in Connecticut, and suburban NY too, at "German" bakeries. You paid by the pound. The crumb was very uneven and once the cake was sliced you could see the thickness of crumb and cake. You could request which end from which to cut your portion. Which was put in a white box with string. Most towns had both "German" and "Italian" butchers and bakers. The butchers had fresh meat and cured meats and cheese and salads. A lot of it was non corporate. The German ones are gone. Italian bakeries and delis do hang on.

Yes. And the knife stayed in the Entenmann's box with the remainder of the cake afterward. Nobody knew why.

Women of my mother's generation (born 1930) who didn't work outside the home had the time and resources to do this. They consumed "diet candy' (Ayds) AND chowed down on coffee cake with friends--pretty much at the same time.

Lauren Bacall always had pot of High Point coffee brewing in case Ms. Leonard Bernstein or Yoko Ono dropped by at the Dakota.

In Wisconsin, they're called Kringles.

R51 yes, those are still strong in WI. I lived in Madison for a few years and remember those more from work. You couldn't so much as scratch your ass without someone bringing in a Kringle to celebrate it.

[quote] The German ones are gone

There are still some here and there. But I agree, more cities still have their Italian groceries/bakeries running.

Such great memories of days gone by.

Today, we mistaken Facebook and other social media interaction as 'socializing'. No more entertaining in person, no more getting families together on a regular basis, no more person-to-person interaction (as we can see from Millennials and Zoomers).

My cousin is 43 with an 18 year old son who just left home for college on the opposite side of the country. She mentioned all summer (via Facebook) , since his HS graduation this past June, she and her husband were going to have a 'big family cookout in mid-August to wish him well on his college venture. This was to take the place of a graduation party in June. Sounded like a good idea. It never happened. The kid took off a few days before Labor Day, and a number of people (via Facebook) questioned how did they miss the announcement of the cookout she was planning and inviting us all to ?

Her response - "Busy summer - I didn't have time."

Really ? She and her hubby couldn't set aside three hours on a Sunday afternoon to cook hot dogs and hamburgers for about 20 guests in their giant backyard, to celebrate their son ? Mind you, everyone responded on FB during the summer with "I'll bring a dessert!" or "I'll bring a side dish!" - so she wasn't doing this alone.

This is why we don't socialize in person any more. The younger generation has different priorities.

You know why, R48 - that way you cold always cut yourself a slice without walking the 3 feet between the kitchen table and the cutlery drawer. And less to wash!

During dinner my dad would always ask me to get him a knife, or whatever - but his chair was right near the drawer and I was at the other end of the table. He was paying for the food, so in hindsight it was a pretty fair exchange.

While being hospitable to guests is a custom that goes back millennia, I think for postwar Americans it was also a point if pride that you could - my grandparents were the children if immigrants, my parents were born during the depression - their definition of "doing well" was very different than ours today.

My maternal grandfather was one of seven, his mother died while he was in high school. He dropped out and moved into a rooming house with his father, the six sisters were farmed out to other relatives. He and his dad worked to provide the money for their upkeep. When I was in college, I asked what it had been like to grow up poor. "We were never poor, he replied very matter of factly, we always had food on the table."

My mom and her friends did a coffee and cake thing once a week in the evenings at each others’ homes in the 70s (suburban Connecticut). It was a fun social gathering for them

r48 that's funny and so true.

I got on an Entenmann's roll (lol) back in the early 90s when I lived in Western NY. I really loved the Raspberry Danish Twist, and I absolutely left the knife in until the cake was gone.

Yes, I was a fat whore back then, and not to be trusted when left around an open Entenmann's coffee cake.

As a NJ kid in that era, this is the first time I'm hearing of this.

This was also a time before people carried water bottles everywhere and there weren't shops on every corner where you could buy cheap beverages and ready to eat snacks. So it was quite possible your visitor might be hungry or thirsty by mid-afternoon.

I'd imagine if you were a busy housewife, stuck running errands, buying groceries, dropping off clothes at the dry cleaners, keeping the house tidy, etc., an hour or two of gossiping over cakes, coffee, or tea with friends and fellow housewives was a welcome relief from the domestic drudgery.

Modern appliances freed up some of their time, and they busied themselves by forming clubs like the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League, holding elections, fundraising, and putting on shows for the community. I kid, but today's housewives are probably busy homeschooling their kids or posting pictures on FB of Little Liam posing with his first AK-47.

Today's wives and mothers are not baking high-caloric sweet desserts and eating them with friends over a cup of coffee. They're spending their free afternoons at the gym, Yoga, or powerwalking through the neighborhood and sipping on Powerade.

I remember my mother hosting women's group meetings. We had one of those big coffee urns. She would put out cookies. This was in the mid 60s.

I remember an episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” where Laura and Rob are having chocolate cake in the living room and Rob says, “Honey, you can’t drink coffee with that… that’s a ‘milk cake’!”

She replies, “No darling, it’s easy. Just watch”, and proceeds to take a bite of cake, then takes a sip of coffee.

Rob: “YECCH!” (looking away in disgust)

Not really on topic, but no other threads applied.

For the amount of cakes Samantha baked and served on BEWITCHED, none of the characters ever gained weight. Sam was always baking a cake to celebrate Darrin signing a 'big client' at his office. These days, the 35 year old wife would look at the husband and ask, 'Who cares about that ?'

SF suburbs, 1960s-2000s until she died, Mom would put on a pot of coffee and whip up a coffee cake if friends and/or neighbors dropped by, usually on weekend afternoons, and pretty much anytime on weekdays after she retired. In the 60s, they'd also smoke while gossiping. After holidays, she'd have cookies on hand to serve. She'd also do this whenever one of my siblings or I would drop by as adults. She was Greek and was compulsive about serving food or snacks to guests. Don't remember people coming over for dessert after dinner, however. When we visited relatives in Greece, my cousins would serve the exact same cakes and cookies. In fact, their houses smelled the same as ours -- like pine-based floor cleaner and fresh baked sweets.

all this got me thinking about the cookie table!...a wedding tradition from Pittsburgh area