North America · Volume 34, The Hollow, the Ridge and the Mill Town
Apple Stack Cake
Appalachia, United States
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Apple Stack Cake
Makes one 8-layer cake. About 2 hours active, plus 2 to 3 days resting.
Ingredients
- 500g dried apples
- water to cover, sugar to taste water and sugar, to stew the apples
- to taste ground cinnamon, allspice
- 500g flour, 1 tsp baking soda, ½ tsp salt, 125g shortening, 200g sugar, 240ml sorghum or molasses, 2 eggs, 240ml buttermilk flour, baking soda, salt, shortening, sugar, sorghum or molasses, eggs and buttermilk, for a stiff, low-sugar dough, rolled thin and baked in 8 rounds
Method
- Simmer the dried apples in water until soft, then mash to a thick apple butter spiced with cinnamon and allspice, sweetened with sugar to taste.
- Roll and bake eight thin rounds of dough, each about the diameter of a dinner plate, until just set and lightly browned.
- Stack the layers with a generous spread of the apple filling between each, finishing with filling on top.
- Wrap and rest at room temperature for a minimum of 24 hours, ideally 2 to 3 days, before cutting, so the moisture from the filling softens the deliberately dry layers into a moist, unified cake.
Notes
The popular story that wedding guests each brought a single layer, the number received said to measure how well liked the bride was, is widely repeated but was not corroborated by any in-tradition or academic source in this chapter's research, and should be read as community folklore rather than documented history.
What a modern chef changes
The resting mechanism itself made faster and more even, without abandoning the principle.
Rung 6
Method
- Vacuum-seal the assembled, unrested cake and hold it under light compression in the fridge for 24 hours, drawing the filling's moisture into the layers far more evenly and quickly than an open, unweighted rest achieves.
- Purée and pass the apple filling through a chinois for a completely smooth spread, so moisture migrates into the cake layers at a uniform rate rather than unevenly around lumps of stewed fruit.