Pineapple Coffeecake Recipe
IMPORTANT EDITORIAL NOTE FROM ME, THERESA, THE EDITOR: I don’t normally like to occupy a recipe post with a long story, because I’m exactly like you and I hate scrolling through some food blogger’s potentially-interesting-but-probably-not narrative regarding a recent farmer’s market trip with their aunt for clams in order to get to a freaking recipe for banana bread (WHY THE CLAMS??!!).
In fact, I have a whole separate section for Histories, and another one for Kitchen Skills, and even a whole freaking post about the Farmers Market. Recipes are recipes and I like to keep them efficient and easily available. BUT.
Not this recipe. It’s from my family, so for one I feel entitled. Secondly, I feel like I need to talk about it in order for you to be able to make it appropriately, and maybe save yourself a little time. And third, to be honest, I feel a touch emotional posting this. This recipe is Christmas and it’s nice to have a space to blather on about it.
So, I’m sorry, but here’s a few paragraphs before a recipe. I promise I won’t do it very often, if ever again.
Pineapple Coffeecake is a bit of a misnomer. While this dish is eaten in the context, format and posturing of a coffeecake, it really is bread with pineapple baked on top.
“Coffee breads” were (relatively) popular in the 1950s, which is about when my grandmother, Mary Rickloff, started baking this coffeecake. Every Christmas she would make the bread dough, prepare the pineapple, bake the sucker, then frost it. It was a family favorite, and it wasn’t Christmas without it.
By the time I was a breathing, thinking, Pineapple Coffeecake eating, member of my family, my grandma was well in to her 70s, and was pretty tired from cooking most of her life. So, at this point, she was buying frozen bread dough, weaving it into a braid, and slapping on pineapple with her head held high.
And let me say, I grew up eating her cheater Pineapple Coffeecake with zero complaints. I loved her coffeecake so much, that one time when she was babysitting us while my parents were gone for a week, I convinced her to make my sisters and I not one but THREE pineapple coffeecakes. We scarfed them all down, knowing we needed to bury the evidence before my parents got back.
With her granddaughter’s greediness acknowledged and briefly set aside, I respect her choices to use frozen bread dough entirely. In fact, if you want to skip the bread making part of this recipe, please do. Buy a package of frozen bread dough from Freddie’s, thaw it out, and bake that puppy. It’ll turn out great!
For the purposes of this blog, and my pride as a baker, I wanted to have a from-scratch recipe to offer. This was trickier said than done, since she didn’t have an official bread recipe in her cookbook labeled “Pineapple Coffeecake Bread Dough.” Every member of my family who has made Pineapple Coffeecakes has a different method. My dad was helpful to the extent that he remembered that she did, in fact, make a bread for this, and that he had made it himself numerous times. However, he informed me that he wings the bread recipe every time. A bit of a dead end for my sleuthing there.
So I took my best guess, and revamped a recipe Grandma had clipped in her cookbook for “Double-Quick Coffee breads.” My big hint was that it was pasted next to a scribbled recipe for “Pineapple Coffeecake Topping,” and I could only imagine the two recipes went together (this is NOT always the case with her book, however.)
This coffee bread is easy to throw together, and requires only one rise, which according to my dad is the only amount of rises bread ever needs (ahem, cough, ahem). It ended up tasting and looking like the Pineapple Coffeecake from my childhood, so I think my guess was probably right. I know I’m opening myself up for grief next Christmas that I got something wrong, or that my dad is right that fermentation and proofing should really just be one and the same. They are decidedly not, but also, this bread does what it’s supposed to do. So you’re not going to find me sitting on those eggs hard enough to crush them (I just made up that adage, and I like it, so it’s staying.)
This calls for a lot of pineapple goop, because we like it moist and goopy as it sits through Christmas morning. It can end up having a hard time baking on top in the oven, so I offer an option to pop on the broiler near the end of cooking to help brown the top.
My Grandma Rickloff was a sweet and feisty angel who always indulged and spoiled us on her delicious coffeecake. I hope you feel some of her love when you make this. Enjoy!
Pineapple Coffeecake
Ingredients
Bread Dough:
- 7 grams instant yeast, quick rise (1 packet)
- 175 g warm water (3/4 cup)
- 55 g sugar (1/4 cup)
- 352 g bread flour (2 1/4 cup, lightly packed)
- 7 g salt (1 tsp)
- 1 egg
- 53 g soft butter (1/2 stick)
- Pan release spray as needed
Pineapple Topping:
- 8 oz crushed pineapple
- 1 T cornstarch
- 1 T brown sugar (light or dark)
Frosting:
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 T milk
Instructions
Make the Bread Dough
- Pour yeast, warm water, and sugar into bottom of mixing bowl in stand mixer, fitted with hook attachment. Stir with hook until sugar and yeast are dissolved. If you're worried your yeast might be dead, wait a few minutes for yeast to start foaming. If you're pretty confident your yeast is good to go, proceed to next step.
- Add half of the flour and salt, and beat with hook for two minutes.
- Add egg, butter and rest of flour. Mix with hook until dough is smooth, and starting to pull away from sides of mixing bowl, about 8 minutes on high speed.
- Lightly flour a work surface, and empty dough out of bowl on to surface. Divide dough into three equal portions.
- Using flour to assist you, use your hands to roll dough out to 10-12 inch ropes. Once you have three ropes, braid pieces together and tuck in the end.
- Line a 12 by 17" sheet pan with parchment, spray parchment, and transfer braided loaf onto sheet pan. Loosely cover loaf with sprayed plastic wrap. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and allow dough to proof on sheet pan, in a warm spot, for about 1 hour. It'll grow about 50% in size.
Make the Pineapple Topping
- Use a small sauce pan to gently heat all of the crushed pineapple.
- In a bowl off the heat, whisk together cornstarch and brown sugar. Add to pineapple mixture.
- Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Mixture should get thick and translucent. Taste it to make sure starch has thoroughly cooked (i.e. it shouldn't taste starchy).
- Allow mixture to cool and set aside until ready to use.
Bake the Coffeecake
- Before baking, add about 1/4 of cooled pineapple mixture to top of coffeecake. Place in oven and bake for 15 minutes.
- Take coffeecake out of oven, and add rest of pineapple mixture. Place back in oven, and bake for another 20 minutes. At this point, check coffeecake for brownness – if sides are getting too brown, foil the sides (this will probably not be the case.) Otherwise, just rotate bread, and check again in 15 minutes.
- If the coffeecake is looking done on top, pull cake out and allow to cool on a wire rack.If the top is still looking pale and a bit dough-y: make sure the coffeecake is in the center of your oven, then turn on the broiler of your oven. If you broiler has settings, turn it to low. Keeping a close eye on the coffeecake, allow the top to lightly brown. Once satisfactorily brown, pull coffeecake out of the oven, check bottom (should be brown and sound hollow when rapped with finger.) Allow to cool on a wire rack.
Frost the coffecake
- In a small bowl, whisk together powdered sugar and milk. It should make a light glaze. Use a spatula or table knife to frost cooled coffeecake.
- Allow frosting to set and enjoy!