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Stack ‘Em Up and Eat ‘Em

by

Jill Sauceman photo

Stack cake is the ultimate mountaineers’ dessert—a not too sweet, but satisfying and completely flavored dessert made of 4-6 thin layers of molasses-tinged, biscuit-like cake covered with a dark, rich dried apple puree. 

The cakes, once baked and stacked, are covered with a towel and put away to ripen for at least two and sometimes as many as seven days. When they’re finally cut into, the juice and aroma of the apples have permeated the hard cake, making for flavor and texture unlike anything else.

My Aunt Rae had just deemed a stack cake ready for cutting one day when my cousin, Sparky Parkey, showed up at her door. Rae made him some coffee and as the two of them began to eat she sighed about what a shame it was my daddy, up in Louisville, couldn’t have some.

Sparky not only agreed but said since he didn’t have anything planned that afternoon and night, he’d just remedy the situation. Rae wrapped up the rest of the stack cake, Sparky jumped in his car and drove three solid hours to our door. There he had another piece of cake with Daddy, drank about a pot of coffee, told about an hours’ worth of news and stories, and turned around and drove right back to Corbin and Aunt Rae with Daddy’s thanks.

Here’s a recipe for stack cake based on Aunt Rae’s and worth a drive.

Apple Stack Cake

Serves 12

You Will Need

To Prepare

1) Put apples in a heavy saucepan and add water to cover. Bring to a boil and then turn heat down and simmer for about an hour until the apples are safe enough to be mashed. You’ll need to stir the apples down into the water at first, since they tend to float. And you’ll need to stir them frequently throughout since they tend to stick. You may need to add more water as they cook so that they don’t dry out and burn.

2) When apples are good and soft, mash them with a potato masher, making a lumpy puree. While mashing, add brown sugar and mace and continue to simmer for a few more minutes to mix the flavors, stirring all the while. The consistency should be like a chunky apple butter or applesauce. If the mix is too watery, continue cooking on low heat, stirring, until it is thickened. 

3) Remove from heat.

4) While apples are cooking, sift together 4 cups of flour, soda, and salt. Cream together shortening, sugar and molasses. Mix beaten eggs and buttermilk. In small, alternating increments, add flour and buttermilk mixes to creamed shortening and sugar. Mix well after each addition. Dough should be like that for biscuits. Use as much as necessary from additional cut of flour to get the proper consistency.

5) Pat into a ball and chill in refrigerator until apples are ready. 

6) Divide dough into five roughly equal handfuls. Each of these will be a layer, and if you want and you have five identical cake pans, you can roll them out and bake them all at once.

But the traditional way to make stack cake is to bake each layer one at a time in a well-greased and floured, black cast-iron skillet. I’ve done it both ways and although I can’t give you a logical reason why, I believe the skillet method actually does taste better.

To do this, take one handful of dough and leave the rest refrigerated. Roll it into a ball, pat it into a disc, put it on a floured board and roll it a couple of times almost big enough to fit an 8-9 inch skillet. Lay the dough in the greased and floured skillet and pat it out to fit. Sometimes the dough is harder to handle than others and will tear. But you can pat it together in the pan—making sure not to leave any broken seams or gaps.

7) Bake each layer for approximately 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Keep an eye on them to keep them from burning. They’re done when they’re golden brown all over and pull away slightly from the edge of the pan.

8) Put the first layer on a large plate and while you’re baking the next one, cover the top with 1 1⁄2 cups of the apple puree, spreading it evenly to the very edges of the cake layer.

“I stack ‘em as I bake ‘em and that’s what gives them the best taste,” my Aunt Rae says. You should do the same. Don’t put any apples on the fifth, top layer though. When they’re all stacked, let them cool , then wrap in plastic wrap and a clean towel and put in a cool, dry place for at least 48 hours before cutting. 

Excerpted from Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken: The Heart and Soul of Southern Country Kitchens. Copyright ©1991 by Ronni Lundy.

Bill Monroe’s Birthday Cake

Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, was born on the same day as my father, September 13, 1911.

Monroe had a reputation for being difficult to interview and he lived up to it the first time I talked to him for an in-depth profile for the Louisville Times in the early 1980s. During our first meeting in Nashville, he was gracious but perfunctory in his answers, telling me only the things—in nearly identical quotes—that he’d told countless interviewees before. At the end of our conversation, hoping for another chance to talk and dig a little deeper, I asked him if we might speak again when he came to a Louisville bluegrass festival that September. 

Looking regal and removed, like the country shaman he was, he said he might talk to me again if I’d bake him a birthday cake.

I said I would and—almost as if he were giving me a test—he squinted his eyes and asked what kind.

Playing a hunch, I answered with my father’s all-time favorite—apple stack cake.

Monroe’s face broke into one of his rare smiles:

“Now apple stack cake, I don’t think I’ve had a good one for years. And when I was a young man and my Uncle Pen would take me with him to play the dances up around Rosine, Kentucky, why the people would come from miles and miles away to hear us play. And they’d dance all night, sometimes up until the morning. And the women would make food and bring it. And there’d be tables of cakes and pies, but the ones I always went straight for were the apple stack cakes. Now there’s nothing in the world quite like that flavor. You bring me a good one an we’ll see.”

So I baked him the cake from the recipe here. He took it with a simple thank you at the festival that fall and never said if he found it good or not. But when I called a while later to set up another interview and reminded him of the cake, he invited me and my photographer to three more meetings—including one very long afternoon at his secluded Tennessee farm.

—Ronni Lundy

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