Applesauce Cake

 

Applesauce Snacking Cake lightly dusted with powdered sugar

Bake in a 9 x 9 pan until the middle is set and an inserted toothpick comes out clean

Because many of the cookbooks in my historical collection are fragile I either make copies directly from the book or if they are extremely fragile I take a photo fo the page and print it.  Note that the recipe on the top is from my grandfather, Merrill Darling's, Navy Cookbook from WWII  and makes enough cake for 100 sailors.

Mix all the dry ingredients together before you add them to the applesauce butter mixture

We live in a town of bakeries.  My parents bought our bakery, The Solvang Bakery, when I was in 8th grade.  My freshman year of high school, my best friend was Ida FitzGerald who was dating Adam Petersen.  Adam's family owned Mortensen's bakery.  Adam, Ida and I would all go to Peter's Pastries because they had a simple Applesauce Cake that neither of the bakeries we owned made.

My parents eventually bought Peter's Pastries when Peter Weber retired and we still make Peter's Butter Cookies and sell them daily.  I don't know what happened to the applesauce cake recipe.  What I do know is that I can remember the taste of that cake as if I ate it yesterday.  It's a simple cake without icing.  Some would call it a tea cake, some may call it a coffee cake and I've seen it referred to in a number of cookbooks as a snacking cake. 

I've been collecting Applesauce Cake recipes for years.  I have them in sheet protectors in a my white notebooks.  I also have a Historical Cookbook collection that I share on my historical_cookbooks instagram page.  Whenever I'm testing recipes and I want to refer to other versions I'll make copies of various recipes on my computer printer.  If the cookbook is fragile, then I take a photo of the recipe and print the photo.  I had finally gathered about 12 recipes and began going through the ones I think would be as close as possible to my memory.  I made four that were all good, but not the taste that I had in my memory.  Also, I noticed some recipes had no eggs, others didn't have butter, many used shortening and I knew I wanted butter instead of shortening.  Many of the recipes were designed for 8 x 8 pans that used to be common.  The current common size now is a 9 x 9.  So I also realized that once I figured out the correct combination of ingredients that I would need to increase the the amounts so that I would have a thick instead of thin cake.  So then I started with my own versions because I couldn't find a previously existed recipe that matched what I had in my mind.  I can say there wasn't a bad recipe.  All of them were good and thankfully my husband loves applesauce cake and he was happy to try all of them.  I was really close on version 5 to the ultimate cake but I was a little lazy and just put in extra butter in thinking it wouldn't matter.  But shockingly there is a thing as too much butter.  And for my husband who puts butter on his butter, when he tasted the final version he said, THIS ONE IS THE BEST!  Literally the only difference between version five and version six is 1/4 of a cup of butter.  The texture and flavor are better with less butter.

About 15 years ago I was interviewing my grandmother, Jean Darling, about her childhood and her favorite recipes, Applesauce Cake topped the list.  Then my mom walked in when I was in the middle of recipe testing and she said, "This is the kind of simple cake I love.  This reminds me of my childhood."

Applesauce Cake recipes stopped appearing in cookbooks in the 1990's.  It's almost impossible to find an applesauce cake recipe in a cookbook published in the last years.  I think it's time for a comeback!

MAILI'S NOTES:  An important thing to remember when making this cake is to be sure the butter is softened before you cream it with the sugar.  It makes a difference in the final result.  And then add the eggs one by one, beating well after each egg is added.

If you are someone who likes frosting you could make a cream cheese applesauce frosting, but this cake is really meant as a "snacking cake" and is so good with just a dusting of powdered sugar.

I've tested this cake with a variety of brands of applesauce as well as sweetened and unsweetened applesauce.  They all worked so just use your favorite applesauce.

APPLESAUCE CAKE

Makes 1  9 x 9 Cake

3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 1/2 cups applesauce

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves or ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 9 x 9 baking pan with butter

Cream softened butter and sugar together.  Add the eggs one at a time, blending well after each egg.  Add the applesauce and blend.

In a separate bowl combine all the dry ingredients:  flour, cinnamon, cloves, Kosher salt, baking powder and baking soda.  Mix them well.

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture a half cup at time until combined.  Pour batter into the greased 9 x 9 pan and use a rubber spatula to be sure to get all of the batter.

Bake in a 350 oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool a minimum of 10 minutes before removing from pan.

Serve plain or with a light dusting of powdered sugar.

MAILI HALME PETERSON