By Steve Roark
Volunteer, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

Making Apple Stack Cake has been a holiday tradition for my family and for many other mountain people for generations, and is culturally recognized as an Appalachian heritage. It has a long history that was interesting to sift through, pardon the pun.

The reason stack cake was so popular back in the day is that most of the ingredients were grown on the farm. Wheat was grown and taken to a local water powered mill to produce flour. Dried apples, buttermilk, molasses, lard, and eggs were also home-grown. Spices and baking soda were reasonably easy to get at local markets. Modern stack cakes are made by mixing up a thin batter and pouring it into baking pans. But back in early settlement days folks didn’t always have a stove and cooked in a fireplace. So the cake layers were made by mixing up a thick dough that was hand pressed into an iron skillet and baked one at a time over the fire, resulting in a cake layer that had a cookie-like consistency. The dried apples were rehydrated by cooking them down with water and spices, which could be cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, ginger, or allspice. The stack cake recipe has changed over time, with each family doing their own version based on what they had. The filling can be applesauce or apple butter. However, I’m a tradition snob and think the best and more robust tasting filling is made from dried apples.

Appalachian apple stack cake goes back at least to the early 1800s, and several states claim to have originated it. In Kentucky credit is given to one James Harrod, the colonist and farmer who founded Harrodsburg in 1774, and is said to have brought the stack cake tradition to Kentucky from his home in Pennsylvania. Tennessee also lays claim to having been the origin. In truth, the stack cake method was likely a version of the European torte, a cake that looks like a stack of pancakes with whipped cream or jam in between

There are many recipes for mountain stack cake available online if you want to give it a try. Keep in mind it is at its best to make it a couple of days before eating so the filling can work itself into the cake layers and moisten them up. Merry Christmas and keep those family traditions going.