How Lithuanian Coffee Cake got it’s name

Many many years ago, we had a great gal named Sally Tessler, who worked with us. One day she came in and asked if we'd like her mother's recipe for coffee cake. As an Italian-American, coffee cakes were not familiar to me, we were more a sponge cake or Anisette dunking cookie or biscotti kind of family.

When I saw the recipe, and saw there was no coffee in the recipe. I thought there was a mistake so I added coffee to the batter and coffee grounds to the filling. Well, Sally absolutely loved it and said it was even better than her mother's, so I insisted to her that sometimes things taste better when someone else makes it. Still, I was too embarrassed to say that I thought there was a mistake in the recipe. Well, the cake became quite the hit, and we were calling it Sally's Tessler's mother's coffee cake!

One day I called Sally and said the name is just too unwieldy, and I asked where her mother was from? Sally said it was my grandmother's recipe and she is from what was Lithuania but now it's part of the Soviet block. I said if we can't even say the name, how could we ever get a country back? Let's just call it Lithuanian Coffee Cake.  We put signs in the window that read "just say Lithuania!"

Years later after Lithuania once again became an independent country, Sally called and asked what do you think? Was it the sign in the window? Don't we wish freedom could be that easy❤

But, you never know, so we're trying to make a Tibetan dessert next🥰