Name: Less sugar Moravian Sugar Cake
Prep time: 2 h 50 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 3 h 30 min
Cuisine: Czech
Ingredients: One baking potato, about 8 oz (227 g); 1 cup water from boiling the potato (see step 1); 2 tsp instant yeast or active dry yeast; 2 tablespoons granulated sugar; 1 tsp salt; 4 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (520 grams); 3 large eggs; 4 oz butter (1 stick, 113 g); 1/2 cup granulated sugar; 2 tsp ground cinnamon; 4 oz butter (1 stick, 113 g)

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This less sugar Moravian sugar cake uses a yeasted potato cake dough with a craggy butter and cinnamon sugar top but with a fraction of the sugar that most sugar cake recipes use.

My Mom and my aunt both make Moravian sugar cake. If you’re from North Carolina, parts of Pennsylvania, or have poured through church cookbooks, you’ve probably seen and made it too.

This cake is almost impossibly pillowy soft, with an addictive buttery sugar crust. You guys, it smells SO absurdly good while it’s baking. Waiting for this to cool is pure unadulterated torture.

Yet, I’ve always been bothered by all the sugar cake recipes out there because of the sheer amount of sugar they call for. Something didn’t add up in my mind. So I went down a deep deep rabbit hole and my own conspiracy theory ramblings to create my less sugar Moravian sugar cake that I’m sharing here.

If you want a little history and some wild speculation on just that scroll down to the bottom. It’s the kind of story that goes well with a piece of this amazing cake!

Moravian Sugar Cake

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Sugar Cake ingredients

Potato: baking potato, preferably organic. If not organic, wash and scrub the skin well.
Flour: all-purpose, preferably organic unbleached
Sugar: granulated
Cinnamon: ground cinnamon. I use whole cassia sticks I grind in an electric coffee grinder.
Eggs: large
Butter: Unsalted
Salt
Potato water: saved from boiling the potato, potato water contains starches from the potato that make yeast active and generally happy.
Yeast: Instant yeast or active dry. If you are lucky enough to be able to get fresh yeast, use this yeast conversion chart.

Moravian Sugar Cake step by step

Make a dough sponge

First, cover a quartered potato in water. Boil until fork tender. Save the potato water, and let it cool to just warm (about 100 degrees). Whisk the warm potato water, yeast, and sugar in a small bowl. When it’s foamy, you’re good to go.

Next, mash the potato. I pass mine through a potato ricer. If you don’t have a ricer, use a fork to break up the potato into a fine mash.

Melt the butter in a small pan, then quickly whisk in the eggs. Time saver–use cold eggs, and you won’t have to wait for the butter to get cool enough to not kill the yeast.

Mix the potato, eggs, butter, yeast mixture and 2 cups of flour in a bowl for about 100 times in the same direction. This will be the sponge. Cover and set aside to rise for about 1 hour.

Finish the dough

After an hour, the sponge will have risen and look happily jiggly.

To this, stir in the rest of the flour and the salt. Knead in a stand mixer for 7 minutes until the dough becomes shiny and extremely elastic. Cover and allow to rise until double in bulk, about 45 minutes.

Add the butter cinnamon sugar topping

Pat the dough into a well-buttered 9″x13″ pan with your hands. If the dough resists being stretched into the corners, allow it to rest for a couple minutes before continuing. In the end, you’ll have one thick layer of dough. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes.

From here, cut up the extra stick of cold butter into 1/2″ pieces. Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.

Gently press the butter chunks into the dough across its surface in intervals. Be careful not to deflate the dough, but do press the butter into the dough. Sprinkle the sugar across the surface and use your fingers to gently press in the sugar to create a pebbly craggy texture. Let the dough rise for 10 more minutes.

Bake the sugar cake

Meanwhile, heat up your oven to 350.

Bake the Moravian Sugar Cake for 30-40 minutes until the top is crusty and brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before cutting.

Less sugar Moravian Sugar Cake

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Total Time: 3 hours 30 minutes
Yield: 20 pieces

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Description

Fluffy yeasted cake with a craggy cinnamon sugar butter top.

Ingredients

Scale

One baking potato, about 8 oz (227 g)
1 cup water from boiling the potato (see step 1)
2 tsp instant yeast or active dry yeast
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
4 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (520 grams)
3 large eggs
4 oz butter (1 stick, 113 g)

Cinnamon topping

1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 oz butter (1 stick, 113 g)

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Instructions

Cut the potato into quarters with the peel on. Cover the potato chunks with water and boil until fork tender: about 20 minutes. Save the potato water and cool to warm.
Peel the potato chunks and press through a potato ricer (see note).
Whisk the yeast and sugar with 1 cup of warm potato water. Set aside until the yeast is foamy, about 5 minutes.
Melt the butter in a small pan. Turn off the heat then quickly whisk in the eggs (see note).
Make a sponge (optional but awesome): Place the yeast mixture, mashed potato, eggs, butter and flour and 2 cups of flour. Stir this mixture 100 times in the same direction with a wooden spoon. Cover the mix, and set aside to rise until double in bulk, about 1 hour. You can skip this step, but the dough will take a little longer to rise in the next step.
To the sponge, add the rest of the flour and salt. Knead on a stand mixer for 7 minutes, until shiny and elastic. Cover, and allow to rise until double in bulk, about 45 minutes.
Preheat the over to 350F (180C).
Well butter a 9″x13″x baking pan.
Press the dough into the prepared pan. When the dough starts resisting being stretched, allow it to rest for a couple minutes before continuing to press it into the bottom of the pan. Cover and allow to rise for 15 minutes.
For the topping: mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a small bowl. Cut up the stick of butter into 1/2″ cubes.
Gently press the butter at intervals into the dough across the surface. Sprinkle the sugar mix across the surface, then gently use your fingertips to press the sugar into the surface to make a craggy pebbled texture. Cover and allow to rise for another 10 minutes.
Bake for 30-40 minutes until the top is a lovely brown, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Allow the cake to cool completely, then cut into squares.

Notes

Why a potato ricer? A potato ricer is the best tool for getting fluffy, well-mashed potatoes. If you don't have one, simply mash the potato with a fork. Use what you have!
The absent-minded baker wins again: Usually baking recipes call for room temperature eggs. 95% of the time, I forget to take out my eggs, but in this case, it doesn't matter. In fact, cold eggs straight from the fridge are really helpful here because they will cool down the hot butter quickly. This way you won't have to wait for the butter to cool before you add it to the dough.

Prep Time: 40 minutes
Additional Time: 2 hours 10 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Category: Breads
Cuisine: Czech, American

Nutrition

Serving Size: 1 piece
Calories: 228
Sugar: 6
Sodium: 201
Fat: 10
Saturated Fat: 5
Carbohydrates: 30
Fiber: 1
Protein: 4
Cholesterol: 52

A little history: Yeasted cakes for coffee

Shared history, Moravia, and yeasted cake

Moravian: this word has two meanings. First, Moravia is a physical historical geographical region in the Czech Republic. It borders Slovakia, Austria and Poland, and the historical capital is Brno. At the village that my great-grandmother is from, you could practically spit to Slovakia it’s so close.

Second, Moravians are a Christian denomination that has roots all the way back to before the Reformation. The Hussites, which organized after Jan Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 for his teaching opposing the Catholic church grew over time into the larger Moravian Brethren church. The church, coming together in the 1450s included peoples from Bohemia (also Czech), Silesia(mostly in Poland), and Moravia. By 1722, the Moravians fled to Saxony (in Germany) to flee persecution. Over time, the church sent missionaries to various places in the United States.

In my research, most of the Moravian Sugar Cake recipes tend to come from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which were two of the places Moravian Brethren members came.

Yeasted cakes in general are very common things in Europe. No doubt through shared history of the Austro-Hungarian empire, there are many similar recipes with different names in each country. Many of these yeasted cakes are baked in forms such as Bundt pans (think babka or potica or gugelhupf or my German Crumb Cake) while others are homey affairs baked in rectangular pans and served in squares.

Something didn’t add up for me–the point where I wildly speculate

Moravian sugar cake is of the bake it in a giant rectangle, cut it up by the square kind of cake.

It’s made with a potato enriched dough. Potatoes absolutely make their way into breads in Europe, and it makes sense. They add moisture in the way of pre-gelatinized starch. What that means is that the cooked potatoes hold onto water in a way that would make a plain dough too wet to work with. That then allows for a bread that keeps longer and is softer than average. If you’ve ever made hot water dough for Chinese scallion pancakes or a Japanese milk bread, you’ve seen this kind of food science in play.

Probably also, leftover potatoes were added to breads so as not to let them go to waste.

Here’s where things didn’t add up for me: if you read recipes on Moravian sugar cake, they call for kind of insane amounts of sugar. When I say insane, I mean cups and cups. I say it makes no sense because I’ve read recipes and baked from recipes from Germany and the Czech Republic for years. One of the things that’s striking about cake recipes from these places is how much LESS sugar they have.

Searching for something authentic

My guess is once upon a time when a recipe such as the ones we see made in NC and PA came to the US it was made in a less-sweet way. Over time, perhaps after sugar became more readily available and tastes changed if more sugar wasn’t added to this recipe.

I searched for months for some kind of Czech sheet tray type cake that used potatoes. Being tragically mono-lingual, I came up with nothing. The closest thing that I could find is the German butterkuchen which uses a similar technique where you push chunks of butter into dough and cover it with sugar.

Whether or not my version is close to a historical Moravian sugar cake–if that is even a thing, I’ll never know. What I do know is that my version which uses a reasonable amount of sugar is the perfect thing to go with a good cup of coffee and a crazy story…perhaps even a crazy story about the origins of the cake itself.