Audrey Blevins of Lexington and her cousin Joyce McKinney of Jefferson, Ga., are putting together a family cookbook with pictures and biographies of all the cooks. “I really want to to include a recipe that my great grandmother made quite often,” Audrey said.
“My great grandmother, Mattie Sheene, kept a diary every year from the early ’30s up to the ’60s (except for the year or so that her son, my great uncle, was a POW — he was part of The Bataan Death March).
“She wrote of the weather, visitors, current events and she often recited what she prepared for dinner. Believe me when I tell you, you won’t want to put her diaries down except to go cook! She wrote about preparing an apple stack cake almost weekly. I haven’t found anyone in the family who has the recipe, but it differs from anything I have found online and in cookbooks. Most recipes call for baking the layers, but my mother recalls that she fried them, similar to a pancake batter, but not. Have you ever heard of a similar recipe?”
I asked Mark F. Sohn of Pikeville, author of Appalachian Home Cooking (University Press of Kentucky, 2005), if he could help Audrey find the recipe. Mark’s recipe calls for baking the layers, but he said Audrey could fry the layers instead and it would be wonderful.
Dried apple stack cake
Use 5 cups of apple butter or prepare the recipe for dried apple filling. If you don’t have pure sweet sorghum syrup, use molasses or dark corn syrup. Finally, if you have six 9-inch cake pans, the layers can be baked at one time, or use three 9-inch cake pans twice.
This 13-ingredient cake combines three recipes: apple filling, cake layers, and glaze. In the process you’ll boil, purée, mix, roll, cut, bake, pour, and spread. You might make the filling on one day, bake the cake and spread the filling on the second day, and let the cake rest the third day. Prior to serving, boil and spread the glaze or sprinkle powdered sugar. (For a complete discussion of stack cakes, see page 147 to 150 of Appalachian Home Cooking.)
Active time: 1 1/2 hours to make the filling and bake the layers; 15 minutes to stack the layers and spread the filling; 20 minutes to boil and spread the glaze. Start to finish: 14 to 26 hours.
This recipe makes a large six-layer cake. Ten might eat a whole cake, but this recipe yields 20 servings.
For the dried apple filling:
5 to 6 cups home-dried (very dry) apples
4 cups water or apple cider
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
(Or, use 18 ounces of commercial, soft-dried apples and 4 3/4 cups of water.
For the stack cake
5 cups plus 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup melted shortening
1 cup 100 per cent pure sweet sorghum
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
For the sugar glaze:
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup shortening or 1/2 stick butter
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon vanilla
Prepare the apple filling: Prepare the filling first so that it will be almost cool when you spread it on the layers.
Bring to a boil and then simmer the apples, water or cider, and sugar for 30 minutes. Stir to combine fully. To save time, pressure cook the apples 10 minutes; however, when using a pressure cooker, be sure the apples are covered with water before putting on the lid.
Stir in the ginger and nutmeg. Using a mixer, food processor, or potato masher, break up the apples so that they are smooth like applesauce. The filling needs to be moist but not runny, and thick but not dry. Add water to yield 5 cups of sauce. Cool.
For the cake:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and select and grease 3 or 6 (9-inch) cake pans.
Measure the dry ingredients: 5 cups flour, sugar, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, and salt into a very large mixing bowl or tub and whisk them together.
Make a depression or nest in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the shortening, sorghum, and vanilla. Crack the eggs and drop them in. Whisk the liquids until well mixed.
Now, if your hands are clean, dive in. Mix the dough with your hands, ring by ring, slowly incorporating the flour as you would for bread.
When the dough is dry enough to handle and roll with a rolling pin, stop adding flour. Some may remain in the bowl. If the dough becomes too dry to come together, moisten it with water. If it is too moist to roll, dry it with flour.
Roll the dough into a log and cut it into 6 equal-sized parts of about 8 ounces. Round the pieces into a ball, and roll them in the extra 1/4 cup flour.
Traditional mountain cook Francis Collier, says, “You need a number 10 iron skillet because the cake wouldn’t taste the same if baked in Silverstone,” the following also works. Roll out each layer with a rolling pin making layers that are 8 to 9 inches in diameter. Fold or roll the layers and lift each into a 9-inch non-stick baking pan. Unroll the dough and pat it evenly across the bottom, repairing breaks as you pat and pressing the dough to the edge of the pan. Bake about 12 minutes or until the layer is brown on the edges and lightly brown across the top. Repeat for each layer.
Remove the layers from the oven and flip them onto cooling racks. When the layers are cool, spread the filling and stack the layers.
Assemble the cake:
Place the first layer on a cake plate and spread 1 cup of apple filling over the layer. Repeat this with each layer. Do not spread apple filling on the top layer.
Let the cake stand six to twelve hours at room temperature. This allows the moisture from the apple filling to soak into the layers. Refrigerate for 12 to 36 additional hours before serving.
Prepare the sugar glaze:
In a small saucepan on the stovetop over high heat, combine the sugar and water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for about 8 minutes or until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage or 234 to 236 degrees.
Remove from the heat, slice and stir in the shortening or butter and then the ginger, and vanilla. Pour the glaze over the cake, starting at the edges and dripping it down the side. To make drip lines down the side of the cake, lift the cake 45 degrees off the work surface and pour slowly. Finally, cover the top of the cake with the remaining glaze, spreading it with a knife. Reheat the glaze as needed to soften.
New Century variation for party stack cakes
After rolling the dough to 3/8 of an inch, cut it into rounds with a 2-inch biscuit cutter. Bake on cookie sheets or parchment covered cookie sheets, and stack the “cookies” three high with apple filling between the layers. Drizzle the glaze. Let stand 12 hours.
Serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or hot sorghum. If the cake is dry, moisten it with a topping of caramel sauce, spiced applesauce, or cider jelly. Offer the cake with cold milk, iced Pepsi Cola, coffee, or tea. For snacks or breakfast heat single slices in a toaster oven. The results smell like ginger-cinnamon toast with apples.
I have never heard of the apple stack cake with a glaze. We got the recipe from my Grandmother, one year my Mother and I baked 125 cakes and sold them at Hillbilly Days for our church youth group.