A streuselkuchen cake, with creme filling, to eat with your coffee. Creme Filled Coffee Cake is a simple, nostalgic breakfast treat, that was part of growing up in a historically German neighborhood.
Kuchen, Stollen, and Streudel
Creme Filled Coffee Cake was a regular treat growing up in Wisconsin. German pastry was everywhere. My Grandma made Stollen, somewhere between sweet bread or cake with dried fruit. Local bakeries like Grebe’s and Meurer’s had Crullers or Spritzkuchen, which you can still find around town. But most common for my family growing up was Streudelkuchen or a Creme Filled Coffee Cake.
I’ve generally been a morning person. Waking up wasn’t a problem for me, even as a kid. Growing up in Wauwatosa, I had a Milwaukee Sentinel paper route, getting up six days a week at about 5 am to deliver morning newspapers throughout the neighborhood. That was a thing a 12-year-old could do in the 1980’s. Although I hated going to customers houses to collect their payments, I made enough to keep me in Atari cartridges and cassette tapes.
Even before I was 12, I’d be up by about 6 am on Saturday mornings, ready for a bowl of cereal and for the pre-cable TV channels to start cartoons at about 7. But every couple of weeks, there would be a couple of dollar bills on the kitchen table when I got up. Three dollars was a signal to walk the couple of blocks to Kissler’s Bakery for a Creme Filled Coffee Cake.
Kissler’s Bakery, Wauwatosa
Kissler’s Bakery was part of my neighborhood growing up. North Avenue had everything a kid needed. Bartz’s Display and Party store at 73rd St, Tosa Movie Theater at 70th, Spicer’s Popcorn truck at 69th, and across the street was both Tosa Variety and Kissler’s Bakery, right next to the appliance parts store, and just before Radio Shack.
Kissler’s would be filled with heavily-accented old people getting their bread and rolls. Arriving early was important, because the glass cases would quickly empty, especially on a Saturday. When my turn came, I would say “Creme Filled Coffee Cake” and they’d take the streusel cake, and cut it in half, slathering on the creme filling to put back in the tin tray to carry home.
Family Breakfast Rules
Rules for eating the Creme Filled Coffee cake were similar to those for the even rarer breakfast treat, Danish Kringle. You could have one, SMALL piece before everyone else got up and had their share. The missing piece would be assessed more by my late-rising brothers than my parents. There was more than could be eaten just at breakfast, so once lunch was over, you could slice off another piece from the pan. Or better yet, just even out that row with the odd cut-out.
Wauwatosa Today
Now an upscale, hipster neighborhood with Craft Beers – like the Fermentorium’s Barrel House – a Tiki bar, a dine-in theater, and upscale Donut and Pizza shops, Wauwatosa remains the “Center of the Universe.”
But there’s not a lot to remember Kissler’s by. From a pre-Internet age, the documentation is provided by JSOnline, the remnant of that Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper.
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