The Brief

[Editor's note: It was back to school this week for LAUSD students, so we figured it's a good time to re-run this story, first published in 2023. Coffee cake memories always remain fresh, even if the cake itself does not.]

At my school growing up in Michigan, I don’t even remember the dessert options. Sometimes there was a cobbler thing. There were also Hostess snacks — Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, that kind of stuff.

Everyone who attended a school in Los Angeles Unified, however, knows about the coffee cake.

The recipe goes back decades. This very site has waxed poetic about it.

“The coffee cake is iconic,” says Manish Singh, director of food services at LAUSD.

But here’s the question: Is it worth making at home? Is this indelible culinary experience so tied to a person’s childhood that it should be considered forbidden as a personal endeavor?

LAist Engagement producer Adriana Pera and I, senior editor for education, set out to find an answer.

We bring important personal history to this experiment: Adriana first sampled the coffee cake in question when she worked as an assistant for an LAUSD middle school summer program.

And I … like coffee cake.

A brief history of LAUSD coffee cake

In the spirit of every online food blog, here’s a lot of context you didn’t ask for before we actually talk about the dish.

The short version: There are competing versions of the original recipe, neither of which you would find in a school in 2023.

One of the original recipes for LAUSD's coffee cake.

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Courtesy LAUSD

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One of the original recipes for LAUSD's coffee cake.

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Courtesy of Austin Beutner

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(The recipes look a little different, but a clever baker will notice the sneaky similarities: One recipe uses milk powder and an oil/vinegar solution — in other words, deconstructed buttermilk. The other main difference is the final amount of cake you end up with.)

Over several decades, the original coffee cake recipe (or at least, as approximate an original recipe as we can find) has undergone several changes, in time with school lunch standards.

For example: The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2012 pressed schools to offer more fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and research showed it led to healthier outcomes for kids. Some of those rules were rolled back in subsequent years, but in 2023 the Department of Agriculture added new rules that cut back on added sugars and salt.

What does that mean for our coffee cake? Gone are the trans fats. Whole grains have taken over for a chunk of the all-purpose flour. Sugar … well, it’s still not sugar free. But the current version certainly has fewer calories.

“Some people come and say I want all the fat,” Singh said. “And I'm like, OK, but we've had to make changes.”

He added that it doesn’t seem to bother most people.

“Last year, we were doing our employee appreciation month downtown in Beaudry [LAUSD headquarters],” Singh said. “They said, 'Can we get the coffee cake?' And I said, 'Sure.' We had to bring it on two occasions and we ran out both times. So people have this memory of the coffee cake and the same thing goes for the students.”

How we baked it

First: In the spirit of the nutritional rules, Adriana and I did some quick math. At least 80% of all grains offered weekly in school lunch “must be whole grain-rich,” so we subbed out half the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour.

What that does: You’ll get a browner sponge. It also makes the cake a little more crumbly, as the bran in whole wheat literally severs the connections between the gluten.

Second: The recipe calls for about a cup of oil. As far as which type, the recipe is unspecific, but if you’ve made box brownies before then you’ll likely reach for vegetable or canola oil. We opted for the relatively flavorless, albeit more expensive, avocado oil. We also … went a little off script, substituting in a bit of sugarless applesauce to reduce the fat without adding sugar.

What that does: You likely can’t taste the avocado oil as much as you can taste vegetable oil or, especially, canola oil. And while applesauce can keep a cake moist, you also have to watch the bake time because the cake might dry out faster.

The verdict

Here is some of the praise we gave ourselves:

• “Wow.”
• “It’s delicious.”
• “It’s not too sweet, even with a lot of sugar.”
• “This would go with a nice cup of coffee. Or orange juice. Or both. Or water. Or all three.”
• “I would have this for breakfast.”

A masterpiece, per sources. (Us, the bakers.)

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Ross Brenneman

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LAist

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For a true taste test, we sought out the opinions of honest teens: Spencer Madeley and Somer Staley, who attend LAUSD's Venice High. They have the real thing every week.

For ours, they gingerly sniffed and took a bite. They offered a pensive critique:

• “It’s pretty good but it doesn’t taste like school coffee cake, not really at all.” 
• “It does a little bit. It has more flavor.” (HELL YEAH! TEEN VALIDATION!)
• “It’s a little dry.”
• “It tastes more pumpkiny.”
• “I’d eat it. I’m gonna eat it.”
• “It tastes like coffee cake, but from somewhere else.”

If we were going to bake it again: There’s a lot of nutmeg, which makes it taste like fall, although maybe we’d up the ratio of cinnamon. It could use some apple, and/or maybe some pecan?

Also: Maybe we should have stuck with buttermilk. We’re adults. We can do that.

The recipe

An update

After publishing this story, we heard from students, graduates, and even former cafeteria workers across social media about how well they remember the coffee cake. We wrote more about that here.

Engagement producer Adriana Pera contributed to this story.

As Los Angeles homeowners grapple with the expense of rebuilding after last year’s devastating fires, an L.A. City Councilmember is putting forward an idea that could lower some costs.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Pacific Palisades, has introduced a motion to explore waiving part of the city’s portion of the local sales tax for fire victims who purchase rebuilding materials in the city.

The 1% of the local 9.75% sales tax that goes into the city’s general fund would be given back to consumers under the proposal. The waiver could apply to lumber, appliances and other rebuilding goods purchased within the city.

The motion, introduced Friday by Park and seconded by Councilmember John Lee, says: “The City should do everything within its power to alleviate the financial burden for these residents and businesses in order to facilitate their return and stabilize the Pacific Palisades community.”

Would it make much of a difference? 

Economists told LAist the proposal could help many homeowners mitigate the high cost of rebuilding, but likely wouldn’t tip the scales for under-insured, under-resourced property owners.

“It wouldn't hurt if it's very well designed and easy to use,” said Alexander Meeks, a director at the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. “But I'm not sure if it's really going to tackle the scale of the financial challenge that survivors are facing.”

Meeks noted that the tax waiver wouldn’t lower up-front costs such as environmental testing, architectural design and permitting. And it may not help homeowners sourcing raw materials from outside the city.

Zhiyun Li, a UCLA Anderson School of Management economist, said the waiver could help some homeowners justify the additional cost of rebuilding more fire-safe structures.

“Homeowners must typically pay out of pocket to upgrade to IBHS+ standards, which are more stringent,” Li said. “The tax waiver could encourage upgrading to IBHS+ standards or investing more in mitigation, thereby reducing future risk and improving the likelihood of maintaining insurance coverage.”

What’s next for the proposal? 

The proposed tax relief would not be available to properties that have been sold since the fires started in January 2025.

The motion has been sent to the City Council’s budget and fire recovery committees. If approved by the full council, it would require the city administrative officer, the Office of Finance and the city attorney to report back to the council within 60 days on options for crafting a tax relief plan.

The motion calls for the report to consider factors such as how to minimize the burden of administering the tax relief, what documentation homeowners would have to submit and what it would cost the city to oversee the program.

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.