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Virginia Apple Cake
One cupful of bread dough, one and a half cupfuls of sugar. When ready, roll an inch thick, put it in a long pan, then slice good baking apples thin, and put smoothly over the dough; sprinkle sugar, butter and cinnamon over, and bake.
A sweetened bread dough pressed into a pan and covered with apples — closer to a German Apfelkuchen than to a butter cake. The instructions assume you already have bread dough rising on the back of the stove, so most of the work is in the reading.
- The doughOne cupful of bread dough means a piece of ordinary risen white bread dough, roughly 8 to 10 oz. A batch of plain lean bread dough, or an equivalent weight of store-bought pizza or bread dough brought to room temperature, does the same job.
- The ambiguous sugarA cup and a half of sugar worked into that small amount of dough is a great deal, and it will slacken the dough and slow the yeast noticeably. The original does not say whether the sugar goes into the dough, over the top, or both, so treat the split as your own decision rather than a fixed quantity.
- Let it rise againThe recipe skips this, but dough rolled an inch thick and loaded with apple needs a second rise in the pan — 30 to 45 minutes until visibly puffed — or it bakes dense and bready under the fruit.
- A long panThe recipe gives no size. Note that a single cupful of dough rolled an inch thick covers only a small area, so use an oblong pan it will actually fill rather than a full 9x13. An inch of dough gives a substantial, sliceable cake rather than a thin tart.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 350-375F for 30 to 40 minutes, until the dough is browned at the edges and the apples are tender.
- The apples"Good baking apples" meant firm, tart varieties that hold their shape — Northern Spy, Winesap, Baldwin in period terms; Granny Smith, Braeburn or Honeycrisp now. Slice them thin, no more than 1/8 inch, and press the edges down into the dough so they cook through in the same time the dough does.
- Butter for the topDot with 2 to 3 tablespoons of cold butter in small pieces rather than melted butter poured over, which soaks into the dough and leaves the apples dry.
- YieldCut into squares. Best eaten the day it is made; the dough base stales quickly.
Cakes built on a lump of bread dough belong to the era when many households kept dough going and a cook took what she needed from it — the sugar, butter and fruit were the luxuries, the base was already there. The form is old and widespread in the German-settled parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland and the Virginia Valley, where Apfelkuchen and its relatives were baked on the same day as the week's bread, using the oven's falling heat. The "Virginia" in the title may be as much regional association as geography; state names were often attached to homely recipes in American cookbooks, and nothing in the recipe itself ties it to Virginia. What the recipe really records is a kitchen where bread dough was a standing ingredient rather than something you started from scratch, which is why it can open with an instruction that assumes a bowl already rising on the shelf.