The Dried Apple Stack Cake

The Appalachian History of The Dried Apple Stack Cake

THE "DRIED APPLE STACK CAKE" is the most "mountain" of all cakes baked and served in Southern Appalachia. The story goes that James Harrod, one of Kentucky's earlier pioneers and the founder of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, brought the stack cake recipe with him when he traveled the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Whether this story is true or not, this cake has remained popular with mountain people.

Wherever Appalachian people migrated--to Washington, Florida, and Arizona, for example—they took along recipes for their favorite version of old-fashioned stack cake. Called by different names such as the dried apple stack cake, apple stack cake, Confederate old-fashioned stack cake, stackcake, and Kentucky pioneer washday cake, all were made using two constant ingredients: ginger and sweet sorghum molasses.

While sorghum molasses was considered not suitable in most cakes and pies, it worked very well in the stack cake. Sometimes cooks varied the amount of sweetening by adding brown sugar to the sorghum molasses--one-half cup of sugar to one-third cup of molasses. The apple stack cake is a low fat, not sweet, many-layered cake. It is made with stiff cookie-like dough, flavored with ginger and sorghum molasses, and a sweet, spiced apple filling. When served, the cake is tall, heavy, and moist. The dried apple stack cake was a favorite pioneer wedding cake.

In the mountains weddings were celebrated with "in-fares" where people gathered to party, dance, and eat potluck food. Because wedding cakes were so expensive, neighbor cooks brought cake layers to donate to the bride's family. The dough for the cake was rolled or pressed out into very thin layers and baked in cast-iron skillets. The family of the bride cooked, sweetened, and spiced dried apples to spread between the layers of the cake. The number of layers per stack of her wedding cake often gauged the bride’s popularity. Sometimes there would be as many as twelve layers, but most often the average was seven or eight layers. Along with weddings, the stack cake was served at family reunions, church suppers, and other large gatherings.

The original recipe is a long, tedious process (taking as much as three hours to assemble). Some cooks just use regular cake layers and plain applesauce or apple butter, or a combination of both, as the filling between the layers. While stack cake made this way may be tasty, there is no comparison between applesauce or apple butter and the strong apple flavor that dried apples give.