A couple weeks ago I got an email from fellow cookbook author, Anne Byrn, who I had worked with a couple years back when she was passing through town promoting one of her cookbooks. Anne wrote to let me know that she just released a new cookbook, American Cake, which features iconic American cakes and the history and stories that surround them. She was gracious enough to let me share one of the recipes with all of you, so I chose this 1917 Applesauce Cake.
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About the Book, American Cake
Okay, let me just say that American Cake is absolutely stunning. It’s a hardcover book full of beautiful photography and fascinating stories to go along with each recipe.
The recipes are arranged in chronological order from the mid 1600’s through the present and Anne discusses the changing culture of each era and how events shaped the use of ingredients and baking styles of the time.
I could happily cozy up in a corner with this book and read it like a novel. It’s so much more than just recipes and is perfect for history buffs. It’s definitely going on my holiday gift guide this year! You can read more about the book and find out where to buy it here.
About the Apple Sauce Cake
I chose to make the 1917 Applesauce Cake because of its simplicity. It has only a few ingredients and is easily made vegan for my vegan friends (just replace butter with a solid plant-based fat, like shortening or coconut oil).
But most of all, this cake is not too-too sweet or rich. The warm spices make it perfect for fall or pairing with a rich cup of coffee. The small amount of fat in this cake means that it feels fairly light on the stomach and I didn’t feel weighed down afterwards.
…Although I have to admit, that scoop of vanilla ice cream that I put on top made it absolutely heavenly! Something about the mix of cool and warm, vanilla and spices. Oh yes.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this recipe and I can’t recommend this book enough!
Can I Make This Cake Vegan?
Yes! This recipe is SUPER simple to convert into a vegan cake. Simply replace the 2 Tbsp butter with cooking oil and you’re good to go!
Anne Byrn’s 1917 Applesauce Cake
Servings 9 1 piece eachIngredients
- 1 cup sugar ($0.16)
- 2 Tbsp butter (plus some for the pan) ($0.31)
- 1 cup unsweetened applesauce ($0.64)
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (plus 1 Tbsp) ($0.19)
- 1 tsp baking soda ($0.04)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon ($0.05)
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves ($0.05)
- 1/4 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg ($0.03)
- 2/3 cup raisins ($0.72)
Instructions
- Allow the butter to come to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Coat the inside of an 8×8-inch baking dish with butter.
- In a large bowl, cream together 2 Tbsp of butter and the sugar using a hand mixer or mixing by hand with a wooden spoon. Add the applesauce and stir to combine.
- In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and nutmeg until well combined.
- Pour the flour mixture into the applesauce mixture and stir just until combined.
- In a separate small bowl, toss the raisins with about 1 Tbsp flour until they are lightly coated. Fold the flour coated raisins into the cake batter. Spread the cake batter into the prepared baking dish.
- Bake the cake for 30-35 minutes, or until the the center springs back when pressed. Let the cake cool for 15 minutes before slicing into 9 pieces.
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Nutrition
Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!Scroll down to see the step by step photos!
How to Make Applesauce Cake – Step by Step Photos
I just wanted to give you a little sneak peek inside the book. Like I said, the photography is GORGEOUS and each recipe comes with an awesome little story about the cake and how it is representative of what was going on in the country at the time. This 1917 Applesauce cake uses really basic ingredients and is considerate of ingredients that were rationed during WWI. Sounds like a perfect fit for today’s budgets, too!
Start out by greasing the inside of an 8×8-inch baking dish (or similar size-mine is more like 7×9). Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
In a large bowl, cream together 2 Tbsp butter and 1 cup sugar. I decided to use a wooden spoon so I could feel like I was making this in 1917. Just kidding! The beaters for my hand mixer were dirty and I was too lazy to go wash them. Jokes on me though, because this definitely took more effort with a wooden spoon than it would have taken to wash the beaters. SMH.
Stir in one cup of unsweetened applesauce.
In a separate bowl, stir together 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp nutmeg until well combined.
Combine the applesauce mixture with the flour mixture…
And stir just until combined.
In a separate bowl, toss 3/4 cup raisins with about 1 Tbsp flour until they’re coated. There is a note in the book about how coating the raisins in this manner helps them stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom. Cool! Once coated, fold the raisins into the cake batter.
Spread the cake batter into the prepared dish.
Bake the cake for 30-35 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the center springs back when you press on it lightly. You can also give it the toothpick test and insert a toothpick into the center. If it comes out clean, it’s done. If it comes out coated with wet cake batter, then it needs a few more minutes.
Let the cake cool for about 15 minutes, then slice into 9 pieces and serve. I accidentally sliced mine into 12 pieces and they were a tad small, so I would suggest nine.
You can give it a light dusting of powdered sugar, or go big and add a big ol’ scoop of ice cream.
What? I had to eat it before the ice cream melted. ;D
So good, and very simple to make!!! Thank you for this phenomenal recipe, Beth!!! :-)
Wonderfully delicious
Hi Beth! Do you think I could swap in whole wheat flour for this recipe or do half and half?
I wouldn’t do more than 1/2 substitution. Usually when you sub the whole amount of AP flour for whole wheat you get quite a texture and flavor difference. Whole wheat flour is so much more dense and absorbs so much more liquid than all-purpose.
Do you think it’s possible to use mashed bananas to replace the apple sauce in the recipe?
I feel like they might not be quite as moist, but maybe you could tweak it a bit and make it work.
I substituted dried cherries for the raisins, which were sitting around in my pantry looking for something to do, and dropped the cloves, because I don’t have any. The resulting cake was absolutely wonderful and a hit with the kids, who are home for Thanksgiving break and ransacking the kitchen at regular intervals.
That’s one excellent recipe Beth! We love how rustic it is, and the way your prepared and served it. Great job! We’re Greeks ourselves and bought a jar of applesauce in an organic market without having any idea what to do with it since applesauce is a foreign “exotic” ingredient to us here :) Now we know! We’ll make your wonderful cake with spices that are VERY close to what we use in our traditional cakes and desserts in Greece (aka melomakarona etc) :)
Thanx so much for sharing this! We’ll use it very very soon!
Panos and Mirella
We tried it (shared a picture on Twitter) and it was fantastic! It reminded us of moustokouloura in taste, a cookie made with grapemust, only here it’s a cake and instead of grapemust, the applesauce takes its place. And the texture was so rustic and old school, we LOVED it!
Thank you for making our day:) We’re enjoying a piece (each one) with our afternoon coffee now:)
You are right, it really tastes like a grape must sweet.
YUM! This was so good and EASY!! Thank you for sharing it!
Wow Nice I will try next day!!
Team Baked Raisin Hater here. I think I’m going to try swapping the raisins for apple diced.
ooo that would be really good, too!
I actually hate raisins as well. We just made this recipe tonight and we replaced raisins with dried cranberries and it was delicious.
I added a half cup of fresh cranberries and a half cup of diced apples, and it turned out really well!
I made this tonight, and it was delicious. I used only 3/4 cup sugar and it was still plenty sweet. I love that it can be made with things I usually have in the kitchen.
My son and I just made this for my bookclub brunch this a.m. we loved how easy & delicious it was. Plus, it was a good segway into a conversation about rations during wartime. A good learning experience for my family. Thanks for this recipe. I really enjoy your blog!
I can attest that this recipe veganizes really easily! I used Earth Balance (a vegan butter substitute) and it turned out perfect. I’ll also add that I used whole wheat pastry flour (to help me rationalize eating this for breakfast) and splenda.
I topped it with banana soft serve (chopped up frozen banana slices that are blitzed in a food processor until smooth soft-serve consistency) and it was awesome :)
I have made a vegan applesauce cake recently because we have lots of apples on our trees right now. I have always loved applesauce cake because it’s usually not dry, only if one overbakes it.
I will definitely try this one, too. Thanks!
This was easy, moist and delicious. Thanks for all of the great recipes.
Love old, classic, retro recipes (I guess I’m not sure what the correct term here to use is) I have my grandmother’s baking cookbook, it has to be from the late 30’s as it has her maiden name written on the inside cover. I also have her cookbook given to all young wives in the late 40’s early 50’s…. Love looking at the recipes and cooking tips in them. This cookbook looks like it would fit in well next to my inherited ones.