My grandma made a stack cake with applebutter between layers....

[jmarie]

Does anyone have a recipe for a cake like this? It was my brother's favorite and I would love to be able to recreate it for him. He always got it for his birthday...
It was a brown cake....many different layers....with homemade applebutter between the layers...Put your thinking caps on!

[Vanessa]

I am not sure but in 1999 there was a Kentucky spiced stack cake . I don't have my books at hand now but sounds familiar. Maybe someone else remembers this recipe?

[JanetB]

Jmarie - My fiance's grandma makes one too. I haven't been able to get the recipe from her (yet!) But, this Apple Stack Cake is from "Smokehouse Ham, Spoonbread, & Scppernong Wine, The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking" by Joseph E. Dabney. I haven't tried it yet - but I am told it is quite close by his female relations. It sounds a little non cooking light to me! (One guess as to who bought this cookbook for me!! The man wants me to cook like Grandma!)

I also think that somewhere in Cooking Light I saw a recipe. I could be wrong though.

-Janet

Apple Stack Cake
Haywood County Stack Cake

4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup sorghum molasses
1 cup milk
3 eggs

For Filling:
3 cups sweetened, slightly spiced applesauce.

Sift flour , salt, soda, and baking powder. Cream shortening, then add sugar, a little at a time, blending well. Add sorghum and mix thoroughly. Add milk and eggs, one at a time, beating well until smooth. Pour 1/3 inch deep in greased 9 inch pans and bake until golden brown. When cool, stack layers (around six) and use 3 cups of the apple sauce b/w them. Yield is 6 or 7 layers.

[Norma]

Check out the apple stack cake in CL Nov 2000, page 126. I have it on my list to try, but haven't got around to it yet.

[mightyh]

Here are a few I found... they sound yummy.


Apple Stack Cake
" This is an apple stack cake with six layers. "

Ingredients
2 cups white sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons baking powder
6 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 pounds dried apples, cooked and mashed
1 3/4 cups packed brown sugar
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground allspice


Directions
1 Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Grease and flour six 8-inch pans.
2 In a large bowl mix together white sugar, shortening, eggs, soda, baking powder, flour, salt, buttermilk, and vanilla. Divide batter into 6 equal parts. Press into prepared pans.
3 Bake at 450 degrees F (230 degrees C) for ten minutes.
4 To Make Filling: To the cooked and mashed apples, add the brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, and mix. Layer 1 cake, spread filling between layer on top and sides. Do this with each of the 6 layers. Let stand at least 12 hours before cutting.

Or

Old Fashioned Apple Layer Cake
2 cups sugar
1 t soda
1 1/2 t salt
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup butter
1 t vanilla
4 1/2 cups flour
Sift soda, salt, and sugar together. Mix eggs
and butter. Add flour and buttermilk
alternately. Roll out to about one-third inch
in thickness. Bake in 9 inch pans at 350
degrees until done. Cook 1 1/2 pounds of
evaporated apples with 1 cup sugar, 1 1/2 t
cinnamon, 1 t allspice, 1/2 t nutmeg, and
1/8 t salt. Spread between layers of cake
leaving the top plain.

[Note: not sure what evaporated apples means, but I assume you could just substitute apple butter for this whole concoction http://www.cookinglight.com/bbs/smile.gif]

Or


Apple Stack cake

From: "Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken",
by Ronni Lundy
Atlantic Monthly Press

Stack cake is the ultimate mountaineers' dessert -- a not too sweet, but satisfying and complexly flavored dessert made of 4-6 thin layers of molasses-tinged, biscuit-like cake covered with a dark, rich dried apple puree. The cakes, once baked and stacked, are covered with a towel and put away to ripen for at least two and sometimes as many as seven days. When they're finally cut into, the juice and aroma of the apples have permeated the hard cake, making for flavor and texture unlike anything else.

My Aunt Rae had just deemed a stack cake ready for cutting one day when my cousin, Sparky Parkey, showed up at her door. Rae made him some coffee and as the two of them began to eat she sighed about what a shame it was that my daddy, up in Louisville, couldn't have some.

Sparky not only agreed but also said since he didn't have anything planned that afternoon and night, he'd just remedy the situation. Rae wrapped up the rest of the stack cake, Sparky jumped in his car and drove three solid hours to our door. There he had another piece of cake with Daddy, drank about a pot of coffee, told about an hours' worth of news and stories, and turned around and drove right back to Corbin and Aunt Rae with Daddy's thanks.

Here's a recipe for stack cake based on Aunt Rae's and worth a drive.

4 cups dried unsulphured* apples, packed water
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon mace
4-5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shortening
1 cup white sugar
1 cup molasses
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup buttermilk
* Unsulphured dried apples are available at many groceries and most health or natural foods stores.

Put apples in a heavy saucepan and add water to cover. Bring to a boil and then turn heat down and simmer for about an hour until the apples are soft enough to be mashed. You 'II need to stir the apples down into the water at first, since they tend to float. And you'll need to stir them frequently throughout since they tend to stick. You may need to add more water as they cook so that they don't dry out and burn.

When apples are good and soft, mash them with a potato masher, making a lumpy puree. While mashing, add brown sugar and mace and continue to simmer for a few more minutes to mix the flavors, stirring all the while. The consistency should be like a chunky apple butter or applesauce. If the mix is too watery, continue cooking on low heat, stirring, until it is thickened.

Remove from heat.

While apples are cooking, sift together 4 cups of flour, soda and salt. Cream together shortening, sugar, and molasses. Mix beaten eggs and buttermilk. In small, alternating increments, add flour and buttermilk mixes to creamed shortening and sugar. Mix well after each addition. Dough should be like that for biscuits. Use as much as necessary from additional cup of flour to get the proper consistency.

Pat into a ball and chill in refrigerator until apples are ready.

Divide dough into five roughly equal handfuls. Each of these will be a layer, and if you want and you have five identical cake pans, you can roll them out together and bake them all at once.

But the traditional way to make stack cake is to bake each layer one at a time in a well-greased and floured, black cast-iron skillet. I've done it both ways and although I can't give you a logical reason why, I believe the skillet method actually does taste better.

To do this, take one handful of dough and leave the rest refrigerated. Roll it into a ball, pat it into a disc, put it on a floured board and roll it a couple of times almost big enough to fit an 8-9 inch skillet. Lay the dough in the greased and floured skillet and pat it out to fit. Sometimes the dough is harder to handle than others and will tear. But you can pat it together in the pan -- making sure not to leave any broken seams or gaps.

Bake each layer for approximately 20 minutes in a 350 degree (Fahrenheit) oven. Keep an eye on them to keep them from burning. They're done when they're golden brown all over and pull away slightly from the edge of the pan.

Put the first layer on a large plate and while you're baking the next one, cover the top with 1 1/2 cups of the apple puree, spreading it evenly to the very edges of the cake layer.

"I stack 'em as I bake 'em and that's what gives them the best taste," my Aunt Rae says. You should do the same. Don't put any apples on the fifth, top layer though. When they're all stacked, let them cool, then wrap in plastic wrap and a clean towel and put in a cool, dry place for at least 48 hours before cutting.

Serves 12.

[noni liedtke]

The recipe is alsoin LUndy's Butter Beans tto Blackberries. MY N.C. friends say it must be made with dried apples. We do dry our own apples(heavenly snack)but I don't feel up to making all those layers. Maybe I can con a granddaughter into making one. Good luck, Granda Noni

[jmarie]

Thank you all for your posts....and mightyh...what a wonderful little story! That was just so sweet....Back in the old days...to do something like that was nothing...but now, we are all so harried! I really enjoyed that!
Thanks to all!