This month's Sugar High Friday (dreamed up by The Domestic Goddess) is being hosted by Spitoon Extra and the theme is drunken apples--that is, apples and booze. So of course I immediately called my mother and demanded the apple-picking cake recipe.
Mom: What apple-picking recipe?
Me: Remember we'd go pick apples up in the mountains and then we'd spend days peeling them and chopping them to make cake?
Mom: We didn't spend days.
Me: Well, it felt like days. Anyway, I need that recipe.
Mom: We made cakes and we made pies.
Me: I need the cake one. You used to make two cakes and freeze them and one was a loaf kind of cake and one was a pan kind of cake and it had a crunchy nutty caramel-ish topping.
Mom: Oh, you mean Georgia Apple Cake?
Me: I don't know. Does it have a crunchy nutty caramel-ish topping?
Mom: Yes it does. But we did not spend days peeling apples.
Me: Okay. Can you send me the recipe?
And the next day it arrived by email, scanned by my dad, and faithfully reproduced here. The handwriting is my mother's and the name RoseAmra is the source of the recipe and my Dad's mother. This cake (a family favorite long before the advent of the Food Network and Paula Deen) is a natural for the addition of some sort of alcohol in the topping, as it is frosted while still hot, so that the frosting permeates the cake. I had a hard time deciding between rum and calvados... thought I'd settled on rum, and then at the last minute opted for about 1/4 cup of bourbon, which I added to the frosting just after boiling it and before before pouring it on the warm cake. FANTASTIC!
Georgia Apple Cake
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Oh, and I don't know why both my Mom and I remembered nuts in the frosting. According to the recipe there aren't any. I got the crunchy caramel-ish part right, though.
.mmm.
I love this post - I can hear the dialog as I read it. I will absolutely make this recipe!
Posted by: Leigh | October 22, 2007 at 02:24 PM
Good job - you have inspired me to make one soon!
Posted by: maryannefisher | October 22, 2007 at 06:47 PM
Looks delicious! Wish I had been over to taste it!
Posted by: Sophie | October 26, 2007 at 07:42 PM
personally I would have gone for rum; but I bet it tastes fab which ever drink you use.
Posted by: Andrew | October 29, 2007 at 05:10 PM
Looks terrific! I'm adding it to my collection.
Posted by: elf | October 30, 2007 at 09:52 AM
I love streusel! And I love apple cakes like that, particularly applesauce cake. About Dorie's muffins (I replied on my blog but you might not see it so I'll copy it here):
Dorie's muffins are absolutely worth baking. If you don't want to bother getting poppyseeds you can just use the muffin base and add whatever you want. I want to try making earl grey white chocolate muffins using that base!
Posted by: karel | October 10, 2008 at 01:13 AM