I was
introduced to Appalachian Apple Stack Cake when Sharon was compiling her family
cook book.
Stack cakes
are rooted in mountain culture, loved by the early settlers. Perhaps having origins in European tortes, both
Kentucky and Tennessee now lay claim to be the source of the first stack cakes. However, they could not have been common
until the mid-19th century when wheat flour became widely available.
The
cake is somewhat of an enigma. It is
relatively expensive to make and is very time-intensive: hardly consistent with
the economically-deprived area of Appalachia where life could undoubtedly be
very hard. Not surprisingly, stack cakes were usually reserved for special occasions:
weddings, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Their
use as a wedding cake has an interesting twist: friends and family supposedly
brought a layer each for the cake and the bride's family then spread the apple
filling on the layers as they arrived. Some are skeptical about this traditional
story as a stack cake should ideally sit and “cure” for at least two days. The
moisture from the apples then softens the layers, making the cake even more
delicious.
Some
of the ingredients are critical: sorghum molasses in the cake mixture and
spices (cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg) in the apple filling. Sorghum molasses were prepared each year. The cane was crushed and pressed to release
the juice, which was then cooked until it reduced to a dark, sweet, syrup. Traditionally,
the cake layers would be baked individually in a cast-iron skillet over a
cooking fire, stacking and filling as you go.
Carefully
dried, sulfur-free apples are essential for the filling and most recipes spurn
the use of apple sauce as a substitute. Pieces
of apples were threaded onto strings and hung in the rafters or strewn onto
quilts spread out under the autumn sky. Properly-dried apples are sweet,
pliant, and flavorful. To make the stack-cake filling, the dried apples are
gently cooked until they collapse into a thick stew.
The
recipes inevitably have local variations and the final cake can vary
significantly. Some cakes look
undoubtedly “cake-like” whereas others look like a stack of relatively stiff
cookie-like layers. Either way, to
accommodate the typical eight layers (and as many as twelve), each needed to be
pressed very flat.
