Apple Cake
2 cups pastry flour 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup butter or lard Yolk or whole of 1 egg 2 tablespoons sugar 2/3 cup milk Sift flour, then measure; add baking powder, salt and sugar, and sift three times; chop shortening in with spoon; preferably with knives or knife and fork; beat yolk, add milk and mix together; spread in square tin about 3/8-inch thick; cover with melted butter.
Core, quarter and slice in eighths 5 tart apples, lay in rows, lapping each other, cover with melted butter, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 3 tablespoons of sugar.
This is a biscuit-dough apple kuchen rather than a butter cake, and the printed ingredient list has been scrambled — the flour appears at the very end. A few things need settling before you start.
- The flour quantity is suspectAs printed, 3 1/2 cups of pastry flour against 2/3 cup milk, one egg and 1/4 cup fat would give a very dry, crumbly dough rather than something you could spread in a tin. The ingredient list is scrambled (the flour is stranded at the end), so the figure may well be garbled; add milk, or hold back flour, until the dough just comes together.
- No oven is givenBooks of this type assumed the cook knew. A moderate to fairly hot oven, 375-400F, for 30-40 minutes, until the apples are tender and the dough beneath is set and browned at the edges.
- Calumet baking powderA double-acting phosphate-and-alum powder, once sold nationwide and the reason this book exists. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure.
- Pastry flourSofter and lower in protein than all-purpose. If you have none, substitute per cup with 14 tablespoons (1 cup less 2 tablespoons) all-purpose plus 2 tablespoons cornstarch, or simply use all-purpose and handle the dough lightly.
- Lard or butterEither works; lard gives a shorter, flakier base, butter more flavour. Cut it in cold and stop while it is still in pea-sized pieces, exactly as for biscuits — the instruction to chop with knives is the point of the method.
- 3/8-inch thickThinner than you may expect. The recipe says only "square tin" and gives no size; an 8- or 9-inch square, greased, is a reasonable modern choice. Press rather than roll the dough in; a thicker layer risks staying doughy under the fruit.
- The applesFive tart apples is a generous quantity for one square tin. Choose a firm cooking apple that holds its shape — Granny Smith, Braeburn, Northern Spy — and shingle the slices tightly, since they shrink considerably.
- Yield and servingOne 8- or 9-inch square, six to nine pieces. Best warm on the day it is made, plain or with cream; the biscuit base goes tough by the second day.
Reliable Recipes was a promotional cookbook issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, and the branded leavening named in the first line is the reason the page was printed at all — these booklets were distributed and reprinted for decades, each recipe quietly specifying the sponsor's product. The dish itself is an American version of German Apfelkuchen: a thin, quickly mixed dough spread in a square pan, shingled with apple slices, brushed with butter and dusted with cinnamon sugar. Recipes of this shape are generally said to have travelled with German-speaking settlers into Pennsylvania and the Midwest, where a yeast-raised base is often thought to have given way to chemically leavened biscuit dough — faster, and calling for baking powder.