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Apple-Sauce Cake
1/3 cup butter or shortening 1 cup sugar 1 1/2 cups thick sweetened apple sauce 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon soda Pinch of salt Spices to taste 1 cup raisins Cream butter or shortening and sugar together, then add the apple sauce. Mix and sift flour, soda, and spices, then the raisins. Mix well. Bake in well-greased loaf pan at 380 degrees F. for about forty-five minutes.
A plain eggless loaf cake in the economy tradition, where applesauce does the work of both liquid and much of the fat. The original runs the ingredient list and method together, so read the order carefully before you begin.
- Oven temperature380F is a real setting on old ranges but awkward now; 375F is the practical equivalent and will not change the result. Check at 40 minutes with a skewer in the center.
- The applesauce matters mostThe recipe specifies thick and already sweetened, not a loose watery sauce. Thin applesauce is a likely reason the loaf sinks or stays gummy, since there is no egg to set the crumb.
- Order of mixingCream fat and sugar, beat in the applesauce, then add the sifted dry ingredients. Toss the raisins in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in so they stay suspended rather than sinking.
- Spices to tasteThe recipe leaves this open. A workable blend for this quantity is 1 teaspoon cinnamon with 1/2 teaspoon each of nutmeg and cloves, or allspice. Add them to the flour so they sift through evenly.
- Soda, not baking powderThe teaspoon of soda relies on the acid in the applesauce for lift, so it cannot be swapped for baking powder one for one. Mix and get it into the oven promptly; the reaction begins as soon as the batter comes together.
- Pan and yieldThe recipe says only a well-greased loaf pan; a 9 by 5 inch tin suits this quantity, and lining the bottom helps. One loaf, roughly 10 to 12 slices.
- CoolingLet it sit in the pan 10 minutes before turning out. Fruit-heavy eggless loaves are fragile while hot and tear easily at the corners.
Applesauce cake belongs to the family of thrift cakes that use fruit puree in place of eggs and some of the butter, an approach associated with American home baking around and after the First World War and still common in the interwar decades. The logic is straightforward: sweetened applesauce supplies moisture, sugar, and the acidity that activates baking soda, so a cook with apples to hand could still put a spiced loaf on the table. Cakes of this kind were commonly baked as a plain loaf rather than in layers and were valued for keeping well.