Mrs Davis' Jewish Apple Cake
Yeah this recipe has a story attached to it. I lived with my Italian grandma for a few years. She got this recipe after WWII from someone who became her neighbor. My grandmother would bake one of these cakes for her church's bake sales and make another for me to eat.
I have only ever got it to turn out like her's one time. I still make them good but I'm competing with a memory. So this recipe has been in my family for 3 generations and it was in her friend's family for at least a generation before that.
Oh an interesting side note I decided all my cats are Jewish. Decades ago I was cooking bacon and had the little assholes meowing and begging. I told them that they were all Jewish, had to keep kosher, and bacon was off limits.
This is a really good cake. I have an apple orchard within a 15 minute drive of me. They do have apples all year round. When you bake with apples and live near an orchard go there and get some of the "Blemished" stuff. My place has pretty apples, baking or slightly blemished, and usually a feed grade. As long as the apple is good you cut the bruises off, baked in a cake no one will ever know that you saved a few bucks.
The batter is supposed to be like concrete. This cake is dense as lead, in a good way.
Directions
- 5 or 6 *Cooking apples*
- 6 TBS White sugar
- 2-3 tsp Cinnamon
- 3 C Flour
- 2 C Sugar
- 4 tsp baking POWDER
- 1 C Oil
- 1/4 C of Orange or pineapple juice
- 2 1/2 tsp Vanilla
- 4 Large or 5 medium eggs
Peel and slice the cooking apples.
Mix the 6 TBS sugar and 2-3 tsp cinnamon and leave off to side.
Sift the 3 C flour, 2 C sugar, and 4 tsp baking POWDER.
Make a well *dimple on top like a volcano crater*.
Put the oil, juice, vanilla and eggs in the well and mix well.
Seriously you may burn out a motor of a super cheap mixer. This is sticky and dense.
Alternate in greased tube pan, layer of dough, apples and cinnamon, ending with dough on top.
Bake at 375f for 1-1/4 hours.
Wikipedia might not be good enough for college level research but for finding out about cooking apples it has a pretty good list of ones and how they cook.
The interwebz can be your friend for looking stuff like that up. My Italian Grandma didn't have the resources we have at hand today. Take advantage of being able to look up good melting cheese, which apples are tart and which are sweet, what that berry bush at the tree line really is.
