Appalachian stack cake
When
Mark
and I got married,
Mark's family kept saying that they wanted to bring a stack cake to our
wedding. We both looked at them in confusion since neither of us
like apple butter, and we instead ended up with the most delicious and
beautiful cake known to man (thanks, Sheila!)
Years later, Mark's mom
sent me the following email, and suddenly the obsession with stack
cakes made sense:
This is the
old apple stack cake, also known as the Appalachian wedding cake.
Years ago, people would come to a wedding and it was a tradition, the
guest would bring one layer of the cake, baked very thin, like with
molasses, ginger, etc. It would 
be real dry, could travel without ruin.
Then the hostess would put them all together with apple butter, between
each layer, so the more layers meant that the bride & groom were
that well known.
This is Mom's favorite cake. I
was able to bake one this year, wanted to share with you how pretty it
came out. I am freezing part of it, so you and Mark can taste
it. Yum yum. This one is 12 layers.
Now that the tradition
has been explained to me, I almost wish we'd gone old-fashioned and had
each of our guests bring a layer to our wedding. Doesn't a stack
cake sound like a fun center-piece for a potluck, but perhaps with
chocolate cakes instead of apple? Or maybe with any cake that
goes well with chocolate frosting?
Thanks for the beautiful
photos and for not minding our cluelessness, Rose Nell! We're
looking forward to tasting such a traditional cake.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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traditions were made to be changed, I had never given a thought to the chocolate update. now that would be a very good tradition, something old something new? when I was younger I never quite understood the adults loving this cake, Taste grows on you. I too would always go for the chocolate as well, if there was one to be found, now that I think of it ?, seems like the stack cake stayed around the longest, ? I always thought it was because it was so big.
Thank you for posting this - I had never heard of "stack cakes," but I love trying out old-fashioned recipes, and my family likes cooked fruit.
I think I will go with the more traditional spiced cooked dried apples filling, however, rather than apple butter.
Just out of curiousity, I poked around looking for a chocolate version of a stack cake. The closest I could find was this one: http://www.grit.com/food/recipes/chocolate-stack-cake.aspx Sadly, the cake layers aren't actually chocolate, but you might use it as a jumping off point to create a true chocoholics stack cake! And then you'll have to post the recipe here for the rest of us to enjoy!
A random side note @ Roland: that sounds like a sandwich cookie that I used to bake with my mum when I was a kid. The cookie part was made from a spicy dough (less spicy than a ginger snap; think spice cake in cookie form). Then you spread melted chocolate chips on the bottom cookie. Once that dried, you spread apricot or raspberry preserves on top of the chocolate, then you pressed the top cookie in place and dusted the whole thing with confectioner's sugar. They were rather tedious to make, but soooo delicious!
I think fluffy is just fine (and preferred, really
), if you just want to make a two or four layer cake. But I don't think fluffy would work very well for one of these 10 or 12 layer stack cakes; it seems likely that the more cakes you packed on top of the bottom layer, the mushier it would get, and you'd just end up with a big pile of chocolate pudding (between the weight of the layers and the fact that each layer would be soaking up moisture from the frosting/glaze). Of course, it would taste delicious, but I don't think it would look very pretty, heh!
I think you want something that's on the dense and dry side, probably closer to a cookie. Now that I think of it, my mum makes a chocolate cookie that's rather cake like; I think I'd try a batter like that and go from there. If I can remember, I'll ask for her recipe next time I talk to her, give it a try, and report back; it'll give me an excuse to make more chocolate stuff!