Apple Cake
This unpretentious looking apple cake is one of my favorite incredibly delicious fall desserts. When I was a young girl, my mother brought the recipe for this tasty dessert home from work. Those ladies who worked with her really did have some good recipes to share with us!
The cake batter is simple enough but finely diced, sugared apples are allowed to sit until the sugar dissolves, before the egg and dry ingredients are added.
As soon as the cake is removed from the oven, an easy hot caramel-like sauce is poured over the top of it.
Some of the warm sauce creates a delicious topping, but most of the sauce absorbs into the hot cake creating a very moist, incredibly delicious cake. Obviously, the cake is very rich. It is a small cake and is baked in an eight-inch square pan. (Note that the pan is lined with Reynolds Quick Release aluminum foil. The cake can be lifted right out of the pan with the foil and easily sliced.)
When the weather changes and the autumn season is on our doorstep, I always think of this apple cake. ◄ Click for recipe. Maybe it is because local apples are plentiful right now. Isn’t it funny how the weather makes you think of certain foods?
Sad Cake
Another cake recipe from my mother’s co-workers is for ‘Sad Cake’. I also think of that cake at this time of year. My mother loved to make this cake and take it to social gatherings. It is easily cut into bars. The men especially seemed to like this one, at least that is what she claims!
Sad cake, I guess, gets its name because it rises nicely during baking and then falls and the surface cracks as it cools. It doesn’t look that impressive, but it ends up being a rich, chewy, dense, delicious dessert. It is easy to take along to picnics and potlucks just cut into bars, but can also be served with whipped cream or ice cream on a plate. Once you have a piece, you will want another and another.
Click here ► for the sad cake recipe.
Persimmon Roll
Another dessert I always think of in the fall is ‘persimmon roll’. Growing up in the country in southern Indiana we had knowledge of where persimmon trees grew in the area. We always gathered them and squeezed the pulp through a colander. We would use what we needed for the persimmon roll and freeze the leftover for another day.
If you are familiar with persimmons, you know they can make your mouth pucker worse than anything if they are not ripe. They need to have a good frost and be retrieved from the ground.
Let me make this clear. They need to have been through a frost, ripened, and fallen on the ground by themselves. One of my daughter’s boyfriends decided to help me out with a bag of persimmons one year. I was elated and set about pushing the pulp through the colander, which takes a lot of time.
As I was stirring up the recipe, I tasted for good measure and pucker! Upon further investigation, I found that he had shaken the tree so the persimmons did indeed fall to the ground! That does not a ripe persimmon make!
Anyway, the recipe from my great aunt Henrietta, you can find here.►persimmon roll.
Any of these desserts is a delicious way to end a meal anytime but especially when the air is crisp and fall is on us.
