The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.
On this page, you will find the details of the recipe, including various suggestions for the filling.
I really like the description of the recipe source: "Jamie found this recipe on a piece of yellowed paper in her dad’s collection of clipped out and hand-written recipes from the 1970’s, no source, no date, and she tried the recipe and it was brilliant!"
I struggled a bit to come up with the title for the post. A cake made to be served with caffè is alien to the Italian tradition of drinking coffee by itself, either at the end of a meal or first thing in the morning, or during a coffee break. In the end, I decided to leave the English name. Also, the original recipe name mentions that the cake is leavened with yeast (lievito secco) and that it includes a meringue (meringa). I decided to omit those from the post title and highlight instead the two main ingredients of the filling.
When I saw the photo of the coffee cake we were challenged to make, I noticed that it resembled Stollen, the German Christmas cake that we made last December. I enjoyed making Stollen a lot, so I had high hopes for the yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake. I was not disappointed. Here are the adjustments I applied to the given recipe:
- I halved the quantities and made a single cake
- I used 1 teaspoon of instant yeast instead of active dry yeast
- I added saffron (zafferano) to the dough, even though I didn't make Ria's version of the cake
- I opted for a filling of 70% cocoa chocolate (cioccolato) and hazelnuts (nocciole)
- I omitted cinnamon and sugar from the filling
- I baked the cake using the convection bake option of my oven (forno) [which does the temperature adjustment automatically]
Everything went smoothly and the cake that came out of the oven looked quite nice. As usual, the minimalist in me made me stay away from special decorations. The egg wash gave to the cake a nice surface color, which, unfortunately, I was not able to capture properly with the camera. Of the many photos I took, only the one above was good enough for sharing. The coffee cake received an enthusiastic endorsement from my husband.
In a recent post, I showed the variation on the theme of French toast below, where I used some of my homemade English-style Coulommiers as topping. I mentioned that something else made the dish special and now I can reveal the secret: I made it using slices of the last piece of coffee cake.
A special thank you goes to our hosts for their choice and efforts. It was a very nice challenge. I hope you will take the time to go around and look at the creative output of my talented fellow Daring Bakers.
Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:
coffee cake con cioccolato e nocciole
or launch the coffee cake con cioccolato e nocciole audio file [mp3].
[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]




