All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [46]
When my grandmother was in her heyday, people were always popping by the farm to visit, so she was always fully dressed (we like to think) and kept at least two cakes under wraps in the kitchen, with probably up to twenty in the cellar Deepfreeze, wrapped in wax paper and then tinfoil, with a little slip of paper tucked in, indicating what type of cake lay therein.
I exaggerate. It was likely fifteen cakes, not twenty.
Anyway, in addition to the Black Walnut Cake and her sour cream pound cake (page 17) and the occasional coconut cake that she liked to make to torment my brother (who hated coconut), she also made “fresh” apple cake with these little hard green apples from her apple trees. Actually, it would be more accurate to call it defrosted apple cake. I don’t think I ever had one that was straight out of the oven. She was always worried about food going bad, so she would bake a fresh one and then, as soon as it cooled, she’d wrap it up and exchange it for an old one in the freezer. But she’d still ask you, “Would you like a slice of fresh apple cake?”
Why, yes I would. And in an hour and a half, I shall have one.
I adapted this recipe from one in Sharing Our Best, the community cookbook from the good folks at Providence Baptist Church in Gloucester, Virginia. It serves about 16.
1. Center a rack and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare the cake pan.
2. In a mixer on medium speed, beat together the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and oil until well blended. The mixture will be … yes … oily.
3. In a separate bowl, dry whisk the flours, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together.
4. Slow your mixer to low and add the flour mixture to the oily mixture in thirds, blending well after each addition.
5. Stop the mixer. The consistency of your batter may alarm you: it will be dense, slightly wetter than putty. Be not afraid. This cake will have heavy fruit in it (apples), so the batter needs to be very sturdy.
6. Add the apples and use a strong wooden spoon to fold them into the batter. Add the dried fruit and walnuts and fold them into the batter.
7. Getting this batter into the cake pan is closer to dumping than pouring and will require what I call the double-fisted, hearty wooden-spoon-and-spatula method, because it IS heavy and it IS sticky and your heart will be pumping! Let your wooden spoon do most of the job, then use your spatula to scrape excess batter from the bowl and the spoon.
8. Bake for 1 hour. When the cake tests done, let cool for 15 minutes and unmold onto a cake rack to finish cooling.
9. Now, this cake has a cookielike crust and is moderately sweet. If you need more sweet, you can dust with confectioners’ sugar OR you can drizzle with honey. You’ll find this baby is particularly good fresh and warm on cold fall mornings when you’re trying to defrost your own fine self.
The fruit voted “Mr. Popularity”
Baked Apple
Its not an exaggeration; 99 percent of my coworkers agree that baked apples are da bomb. It’s not just the taste, but the smell and, methinks, the idea that they’re eating healthy because there’s fruit in every bite. After all, apples contain vitamin C, fiber, and antioxidants; surely that must counterbalance all that sugar and oil in the cake!
Korva Coleman, keep telling yourself that.
Apples are deliciously utilitarian in and of themselves, but when baked, they become both homey and festive. Part of this has to do with the time of year