You Can Get Frank Sinatra's Favorite Cake At Your Grocery Store Right Now

It's hard to overestimate the influence Francis Albert Sinatra had on mid-century America, especially when it comes to helping Italian-Americans to be accepted into the mainstream. What's more, it may not be completely coincidental that Italian food was becoming increasingly popular around the time Ol' Blue Eyes was dining at Patsy's Italian Restaurant (still a New York staple) and sharing his recipe for spaghetti and meatballs. Not all of his favorite dishes were Italian, though. He always had to have cherry Life Savers in his dressing room and was quite fond of Entenmann's crumb cake, a product that's still available in supermarkets today.

Sinatra may have come to love this coffee cake back when he lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, since Entenmann's main bakery was located on nearby Long Island. In 1947, however, he moved to Palm Springs, California. By the '50s, he was having his favorite crumb cake sent out to him on a weekly basis. The shipping alone must have cost big bucks, but the multimillionaire could afford to pay any price to keep his sweet tooth satisfied. These days, Palm Springsians (if this is what they're called) can just schlep to Albertson's and pick up a box of Entenmann's crumb cake with no delay.

Even though I don't recall my grandmother or great aunts being huge Sinatra fans, they always seemed to have Entenmann's crumb cake on hand at their house in Queens. My dad, too, would often buy it, although that may have had more to do with our home's proximity to an Entenmann's outlet. (I grew up eating just about everything the bakery chain had to offer.) 

The Sinatra connection, however, made me wonder if Italian-Americans have some special affinity for Entenmann's crumb cake. If so, does this mean it's similar to some kind of Italian cake? No, not really. While there is a Northern Italian crumb cake called sbriciolata, it tends to be a far more elaborate affair than the Entenmann's cake since it's typically made with ricotta and filled with nuts, fruit, or jam.

Entenmann's crumb cake is instead made in a style that's now strongly associated with New York but seems to have been introduced by German immigrants. (This includes the Entenmann family, who came from Stuttgart.) The bottom part is a basic vanilla-flavored cake while the topping is a cinnamon-flavored streusel. As a kid, I found Entenmann's crumb cake kind of plain, but my adult taste buds have learned to love how well it goes with coffee. Somehow, I'm sure Sinatra appreciated this aspect as well. As he sang in his 1946 hit "The Coffee Song," "Dunking doesn't take a lot of skill; They got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil."