If you have a sweet tooth and are roaming San Francisco trying to satisfy that craving, you might keep an eye open for a rather unusual cake. It sort of looks like it’s covered with little fragments of wood or golden-brown lava rocks with pale frosting peeking through from beneath. This sweet, luxurious, and shockingly crispy cake is known as the Coffee Crunch Cake. Much like California’s iconic Mission-style burrito, this dessert is a San Francisco original.
Originally dubbed the Koffee Krunch Kake, this confection consists of a layered lemon-vanilla sponge cake with whipped cream frosting that’s been infused with coffee. The fractured-looking outside is made from a crushed, bittersweet honeycomb coffee candy. Eating it is a textural experience like no other, and the flavors contrast light sweetness with hints of bitterness from the coffee. You can find it at bakeries and sweet shops throughout the city, though many eateries put their own slight spin on it.
Even if you’ve never heard of it before, this is hardly a new treat. The dessert was first invented in the mid-1900s and has survived with only small alterations since then (depending on which bakery you buy it from). What’s more, this cake was invented because of an unexpected mistake involving a confectioner who messed up a batch of candy. It may well be one of the best foods created by accident.
It all started at Blum’s bakery
Blum’s first opened in 1892 as a confectionery which soon moved to the corner of Sutter and Polk in San Francisco. It was founded by Simon and Clemence Blum from New Orleans and specialized in candies, though it also sold meals. It would be a solid 50 years before the coffee crunch cake first hit shelves…