recipe

Old-Fashioned Stack Cake Recipe

/ sandramervillehart

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My grandmother made stack cakes every year at Christmas when I was little. She was an excellent cook and baker but wasn’t blessed with enough patience to teach her daughters and granddaughters how to make them.

She never measured anything. Cakes, biscuits, and pies were all made by sight and touch. She held salt in her hand to know how much to add. She rarely guessed wrong.

Unfortunately, she shooed us from the kitchen if we asked too many questions about how to make something. We tried to observe quietly but it was difficult to learn how to cook that way.

When she died, I feared that her wonderful recipe was gone forever. I tried to make it from memory and came fairly close on the apple filling but not the cake layers. I remembered them being thin, like a big soft cookie.

Both my sister and I found the recipe while visiting the Smokies.

blog-015For the apple filling between layers:

Arrange a pound of dried tart apples in a large kettle. Cover the apples with boiling water to soften. This make take a few hours or allow to sit overnight. I drained this water but I’m not sure it’s necessary.

Add enough water to almost cover the apples and cook over medium low heat about an hour or until tender. Drain almost all the water from the cooked apples and then mash. I kept about a cup of water in the pot with the fruit.

blog-018Add a cup of brown sugar, ¾ cup sugar, 3 teaspoons cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, ½ teaspoon allspice, and stir well.

To make six cake layers:

Sift 3 ¾ cups all-purpose flour into a medium bowl. Add a cup of sugar, 4 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and 1 teaspoon salt. Mix together.

Beat two eggs in separate bowl and add to flour mixture. Then add a ½ cup soft butter, a cup of buttermilk, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla.

Mix into a soft dough and divide it into 6 parts. Spread about a ¼ cup of flour over a surface to roll out each layer. (The layers are so thin that I rolled it to about half the size needed, placed the dough into a cake pan prepared with cooking spray, and used my fingers to pat it to the sides.)

blog-029The instructions suggested baking in a 450-degree oven but I baked at 425 until lightly brown, about 11 to 12 minutes.

Spread each layer with the apple filling except the top layer. Cover and store at least half a day before serving.

My grandmother wrapped her cake in plastic wrap. Then she covered them with towels and stored them in a cool place about two days before slicing. I did the same in her honor.

blog-032My guests enjoyed the cake. It felt good to carry on my grandmother’s tradition.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

The Tates. Hillbilly Cookin, C & F Sales, Inc., 1968.

 

Salem Election Cake

/ sandramervillehart

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I ran across two recipes for Election Cakes in an 1877 cookbook. Both boasted that the recipes were over 100 years old. A recipe from the Revolutionary War era–what a fun discovery!

Election Day was a festive occasion as early as 1771. Pioneers celebrated the day with parades, balls, religious ceremonies, and food.

Some traveled far to vote. While folks awaited election results, they socialized. The best bakers loved to demonstrate their skills by participating in banquets. Ladies served huge Election Cakes with coffee and cider.

To get an idea of the quantity provided, one recipe called for thirty quarts of flour and fourteen pounds of sugar! Meant to feed a crowd, these cakes originally were a variation of fruitcake and bread.

My cookbook contained two different recipes for these cakes: Salem Election Cake and Old Hartford Election Cake. Wine, brandy, citron, and raisins were a few of the ingredients in the Hartford cake. The Salem recipe looked deceptively simpler so I tried to make this.

img_2414The original recipe, a simple listing of ingredients without instruction, calls for four pounds of flour—far too much for my needs so I cut that down to two cups.

It also called for a pint of yeast. The Hartford recipe gave measurements for distillery yeast; cooks had to use twice as much of home-brewed yeast. I ended up using far too much for the amount of dough.

My first attempt failed. The second try went better, but the cake failed to rise.

img_2417Then I found a recipe for sponge using our modern yeast on What’s Cooking In America. To ¾ cup warm water, two teaspoons of active dry yeast were added. After stirring, I added ¾ cup all-purpose flour and 1 tablespoon of sugar. This mixture was beaten for 2 minutes. I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and set in a warm place. It was bubbling in about 30 minutes.

While waiting for the sponge, ¾ cup of sugar was creamed with 4 tablespoons of butter. Two beaten eggs were mixed into the creamed sugar.

The original recipe simply calls for “spice.” This leaves the spices and measurements to the imagination.

In a separate bowl, I combined 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, ½ teaspoon ginger, and 1 teaspoon salt.

Though the cake is described as a fruitcake, there is no mention of adding fruit.

After the sponge reached the bubbling stage, I added it to sugar mixture and stirred it together. Then the dry ingredients were stirred in a little at a time.

img_2420Place the cake into a pan before the final rise. I used a 13×9 pan. This looked way too large but the cake rises. It was covered with plastic wrap and set on a warm stovetop for three hours. The dough had doubled in size.

The cake baked in a 350-degree oven for twenty minutes. I liked the texture but it wasn’t spicy enough. Plums, raisins, and currants—well floured—were a few of the fruits in some early recipes. Adding one of these may be enough make a more flavorful cake.

Since this is cake/bread, no frosting was suggested in my cookbook. The addition of fruit might be enough.

Election Cakes seem to have gone the way of Election Day parades and balls. The recipe began disappearing from cookbooks around the 1940s.

Enjoy! I’d love to hear if you try this recipe.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

Compiled from Original Recipes. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, Applewood Books, 1877.

“Election Day Cake and History,” What’s Cooking in America, 2016/10/09  https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Cakes/ElectionCake.htm.

“Salem Dames, Election Cake, and More!” Salem Food Tours, 2016/10/09 http://www.salemfoodtours.com/2012/11/08/salem-dames-election-cake-and-november-news/#.V_rVVeArKM8.

“When Elections were a Piece of Cake,” Connecticuthistory.org, 2016/10/11  http://connecticuthistory.org/when-elections-in-hartford-were-a-piece-of-cake/.