coffee cake
9
1.6
- noun
- /ˈkɔːfi keɪk/
:
pastel de café
- For dessert, we enjoyed a warm slice of coffee cake topped with cinnamon streusel.
- bake a coffee cake
- cream coffee cake
- cinnamon coffee cake
I had a fucking espresso and coffee cake.
- I had a fucking espresso and coffee cake.
Examples
-
Where's the coffee cake?
-
Want some coffee cake?
-
Make up your mind about which coffee cake you want before you get to the beginning of the line.
Blog text (13) -
I ate a whole coffee cake last night.
-
"A coffee cake?" I asked, knowing full well what Miss Emily had prepared for me.
Fiction book (2001) -
A sour cream coffee cake, the lady in purple said to herself.
Fiction book (1998) -
There's where you can buy fresh bread and coffee cakes every day.
Fiction book (1992) -
I've revised the coffee cake recipe from a few weeks ago.
Blog text (24) -
There was also hot and cold cereal and cut-up coffee cake.
Blog text (31) -
I see you've been enjoying some of the crumbs from the coffee cake I made.
Synonyms
850
1.0
A sweet baked food made from flour, sugar, eggs, and fat
2
2.0
A sweet cake with a thick crumbly topping often eaten with coffee
1
2.5
A sweet cake or bread often served with coffee
How Sweet
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'coffee' (the beverage or flavor) with 'cake' (a sweet baked item), indicating a cake associated with coffee (served with or flavored by it). This noun–noun compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically and follows normal English modification rules, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Coffee cake comes from a simple idea: a cake to eat with coffee. Because people often served this cake at morning coffee or at coffee breaks, the name came to mean 'a sweet cake served with coffee'.