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Dried Apple Cake
Two cups of syrup or molasses, three cups of dried apples, one cup of butter, one cup of sugar, one cup of sour milk, one teaspoon of soda, four eggs, four cups of flour, one cup of currants (or more), one cup raisins (or more), one teaspoon cloves, one teaspoon cinnamon, one nutmeg, two teaspoons of yeast powder. Soak apples in as little water as possible over night; in the morning chop fine and boil one-half hour in molasses. When cold, add butter, sugar, and milk with soda dissolved, eggs, flour, fruit, spices, and yeast powder.-Mrs H. N. Stevens.
A large, dense fruitcake-style loaf of the sort that kept for weeks in a cool pantry. The original gives no pan, oven or baking time at all, so those have to be supplied.
- The hinge: boiling the apples in molassesSimmering the chopped soaked apples in the molasses for half an hour is what makes this cake work. The fruit absorbs the syrup and softens completely, so it reads as a preserved-fruit cake rather than a cake with dry chunks in it. Let the mixture cool fully before it meets the butter and eggs, or the eggs will scramble.
- Dried applesThree cups means three cups of dried slices, measured dry, not rehydrated. Modern dried apple rings work; soak them barely covered overnight, then chop fine, and add any remaining soaking liquid to the molasses pot.
- Yeast powderAn older trade name for baking powder, not baker's yeast. Two teaspoons of it plus a teaspoon of soda is deliberate double leavening: the soda reacts with the sour milk and the acidic molasses, the baking powder gives lift in the oven.
- Sour milkNaturally soured raw milk, which pasteurised milk will not reproduce. Use a cup of buttermilk, or a cup of whole milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- Syrup or molassesThe recipe leaves the choice open, and period 'syrup' would most likely have meant cane or sorghum syrup. Use unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter enough to dominate two cups' worth.
- One nutmegA whole nutmeg grated yields roughly two to three teaspoons. If that seems strong, two teaspoons is a safe reduction.
- Pan, oven and timeThis is a very large batter, in the region of five to six pounds. The recipe specifies no pan, temperature or time, so these are editorial: divide between two greased and lined 9x5 loaf pans, or use a large tube pan, and bake at 325 to 350F for about an hour and a quarter for loaves and up to two hours for a tube pan, testing with a skewer; tent with foil if the top darkens early.
- Yield and keepingTwo generous loaves, twenty or more slices. Like most molasses-and-dried-fruit cakes it improves after two or three days wrapped tightly, and it keeps well for a week or more.
Dried apple cake belongs to the long stretch of the American year when the apple crop existed only as strings of dried rings hanging in the attic or sold by the pound at the store. Drying was the cheapest form of preservation available to a farm household, and cakes like this one turned leathery scraps back into something rich by stewing them in molasses until they gave up their texture entirely. The recipe is a good index of what a well-stocked late nineteenth-century pantry held: molasses by the gallon, currants and raisins by the cup 'or more', whole nutmegs bought singly and grated as needed, and sour milk always at hand because milk soured on its own. Contributions signed with a subscriber's name, as this one is, were a staple of the period's community and magazine recipe collections.