When I was growing up, my grandparents lived in Elizabeth, NJ. My parents would drive my brother and I up for a visit on any given weekend and we would eat Jewish Deli food. This consisted of lox, bagels, whitefish, and a bunch of the less attractive fare such as herring in cream sauce and gefilte fish. Herring wasn’t a problem for me, but gefilte fish was another matter.
I’ve always found gefilte fish utterly disgusting and awful. I mean, who really wants a mashed up fish patty with terrible flavor that is served out of a jar. And in that jar it has been sitting suspended in a clear gelatin. The thought makes me shiver.
Clearly I am getting sidetracked by the horror of gefilte fish. Back to the important part of this story.
These were wonderful family meals and my grandparents loved to host their children and grandchildren. They rank among my fondest memories from my childhood. My grandma always made chicken soup from scratch which was a star attraction of the meal. And she always had Entenmann’s Crumb Coffee Cake fresh from the store in that box with the cellophane top. This was one of my favorite foods. It was a soft cake, with a dense crumb top and I loved it every time I came to their house. You cannot eat it without the crumbs getting everywhere. Plus, when you were done, you could sweep all the crumbs that had fallen onto your plate into a small pile and eat them too, which was the best part. Alternatively, I would smush the crumbs together into a single giant crumb that I ate. It was an amazing combination of saturated fat, salt, sugar, love, freshness, and high calories.
It is not everyday you find yourself with a perfectly made delicacy that is both inexpensive and (since the company went national a few years later) available in most supermarkets.
Entermann’s discovered that people loved their cake so much that they expanded into an “Ultimate” crumb cake with more crumbs on top. This was a good effort, but a mistake. The cake had exactly the right number of crumbs on it. Do not buy the “Ultimate” version that comes in a box with much more blue in it. The one you want is the “Classic Crumb Coffee Cake,” much like Classic Coke. And don’t think you can get the same thing in a bite size with their mini coffee cakes. These simply aren’t the same eating experience or quality (in my opinion) as a square of the original stuff coming from the box.
For those uncertain of the correct etiquette of eating the cake, you cut it out of the box with a knife and eat it with your hands. I guess you could eat it with a fork if you were frightened of getting white sugar on your tuxedo lapels, but I consider that similar to Bobby Kennedy eating his pizza with a fork and knife. Sure, you could do that, but that’s not how it was done back in the old country of North Jersey in the 1980s. Anyway, I don’t think it has confectioner’s sugar on it, so you could probably wipe away the mess with a napkin.
Many years later, in my late 20s, I came across an Entenmann’s coffee cake in a market and picked it up. It was as good as ever and I now buy it whenever company comes into town. You only have a few days to eat it before it goes a bit stale, so it is better to have someone else in the house who enjoys it as well.
Sure, they have lots of other products I devour, such as their golden cake or those donuts that look like they’re covered in small tumors, but the crumb coffee cake is truly awesome. Go buy a box right now. Eat some. Take it from me, if you don’t enjoy it, keep it to yourself because this reflects poorly on your character. But I promise you, you’ll like it.
It is even rumored that Frank Sinatra had a standing order for Entenmann’s coffee cake wherever he went. Is this true? I have no idea, but the internet says it is, so it must be so.
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