ONE OF THE CAKES IN QUESTION: Schwartz Brothers Bakery’s classic coffee cake.
ONE OF THE CAKES IN QUESTION: Schwartz Brothers Bakery’s classic coffee cake. Courtesy of Schwartz Brothers Bakery


Monica Lewinsky visited Portland last week, but you may not have noticed it, due to the cresting wave of media hubbub surrounding President Biden's short notice fly through.

While Biden arrived at (and quickly departed) PDX on Thursday to give a speech about his sweeping $2 trillion infrastructure plan, Lewinsky's trip was more nostalgia-based, though she did also give a speech, on Wednesday, at Lewis & Clark College titled: “An Evening With Monica Lewinsky BS ’95: Social Activism, the Price of Shame, and Resilience.”

Lewinsky lived in Portland for several years before graduating from Lewis & Clark in ’95—the same year she accepted her well-documented internship at the White House.

During her visit, Lewinsky crowd-sourced social media to help her find a specific coffee cake that she remembered, which led to a short deluge of coffee cake testimonials from helpful cake-fanciers.

The ensuing debate brought many cake-supporters into the replies. Some insisted that Lewinsky set aside her nostalgia in favor of local cakes, like those found at Grand Central Bakery. A few loyalists weighed in on behalf of longstanding national brands like Entenmann's. For a minute, it seemed like the answer might be Coffee People's cake, still available at Jim & Patty's Coffee People on Northeast Fremont.

Local designer Christine Rains even dropped what she said was a reverse engineered recipe for the cake in question:

After some guess work, Lewinsky determined that she was looking for Schwartz Brothers Bakery’s classic coffee cake. From there, the Washington-based company informed Lewinsky that she could still buy the cake locally at QFC.

“For future reference, coffee cake sommeliers: I’m very particular about my cake:crumble ratio,” Lewinsky joked, sharing a photo of her cinnamon-streusel bounty. “I break off the top layer with just the right amount of cake.”