From the Church Cookbook: Apple Stack Cake, the Mountain South's Fall Cake

Some cakes you eat. This one you read.

The apple stack cake carries a whole way of life inside it. If you did not grow up in Appalachian country you may never have had one. That is a shame worth fixing this fall. It is one of the most soulful desserts the South ever made, and one of the few whose very shape tells you something true about the people who made it.

Start with what it is. Not a tall fluffy layer cake. A stack of thin, dense layers, closer to a soft cookie than a sponge, each one baked alone and stacked with spiced dried apples spread between. Six layers. Eight. Sometimes more.

Then the apple soaks down into the cake as it sits.

And here is the part that matters. The whole thing must rest, wrapped, a day or two or even three before you cut it, so the layers and the filling can marry into something moist and dark and deep. You cannot make it at the last minute. It demands to be made ahead. Patience is baked right in.

But I love it for the story.

Whether every detail is exact hardly matters, because it is true to the mountains it comes from. The stack cake was a mountain wedding cake, born of a hard country where no one family could make a grand cake alone. So the whole community pitched in. Each family that came brought a layer, a single thin cake baked at home, and the layers were stacked up, one from this house and one from that, with the bride’s people supplying the apple filling to hold it together.

The height of the cake told you, right there in front of everybody, how well-loved the couple was. A tall stack meant a great many families had shown up with a layer. A short one, well.

Sit with what a beautiful idea that is. A cake built out of a community’s love for two people, layer by layer, each one carried in by a different set of hands. Nobody had much. Everybody had a little. And a little from everybody, stacked together, made plenty.

Here is a starting place.

Apple Stack Cake

Makes one tall stack cake, serving 12 or more in thin slices.

Ingredients

For the dried-apple filling

• 1 pound dried apples
• Water to cover
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon each nutmeg, cloves, allspice

For the cake layers

• 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup molasses or sorghum
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup buttermilk

Instructions

1. Make the filling first, ideally the day before. Put the dried apples in a pot, cover with water, and simmer until very soft, adding water as needed, 45 minutes or so. Mash them into a thick, coarse sauce. Stir in the brown sugar and spices and cook a few minutes more. It should be thick, spreadable, deeply spiced. Cool it completely.
2. For the layers, whisk together the flour, soda, baking powder, salt, and ginger. In a big bowl, cream the butter and sugar, then beat in the molasses, eggs, and buttermilk. Work in the dry ingredients until you have a stiff dough, more cookie than batter. Divide it into 6 to 8 equal pieces.
3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Pat or roll each piece to fit a greased and floured round cake pan (about 9 inches), pressing it thin and even. Bake each layer until just set and lightly browned, 10 to 12 minutes. They will be firm. Cool them.
4. Set the first layer on a plate, spread it with a good layer of apple filling, top with the next cake layer, and repeat all the way up. Spread a little filling on top or leave it bare, as you like.
5. Now the hard part. Wrap the whole cake well and let it sit, at room temperature or somewhere cool, at least a day and preferably two or three. This is not optional. This is the cake. The layers drink in the apple and go from dry to moist and dark and wonderful.

Cut it in thin wedges. It is rich, and a little goes a good way.

Serve it at the fall gathering. And when you do, tell the story of the wedding cake built from a whole community’s layers. It is the best thing about the cake, and the truest thing about the mountains that gave it to us.

The South, shared.