This school year we are featuring recipes from cookbooks located in the UW-Stout Archives Special Collections. The Special Collections are older, more rare, or Stout related books that were originally located in the UW-Stout Library’s main stacks collection. This past year we added a wealth of cookbooks to the special collections, and I scoured the shelves to find new recipes to try that would make cooking from home fun, affordable, and easy.
The apple season is upon us and
what better way to celebrate than with a delicious Apple Spice Cake from the Better
Homes and Gardens Microwave Cookbook, 1976, TX832 .M47 1976. This cookbook
provides tips and tricks for cooking and baking time saving recipes with your
microwave. Most recipes use just the microwave, or a combo of the microwave,
oven, or stovetop. Learning to cook a variety of recipes with a microwave can
be a useful skill, especially if you are a college student without ready access
to a stovetop or oven. You can still find this cookbook on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Homes-Gardens-Microwave-Cook/dp/0696010356
Look for more fun recipes and cooking tips on the Better
Homes and Gardens website: https://www.bhg.com/recipes/
Apple
Spice Cake, p. 48
½ cup packed
brown sugar
¼ cup butter
or margarine, softened
1 egg
1 cup
all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon
baking powder
½ teaspoon
ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon
ground ginger
¼ teaspoon
ground cloves
¼ teaspoon
salt
½ cup milk
2 tart
medium apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced (2 cups)
Crumb topping
(Mix ¼ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup all-purpose flour, and ½ tsp. ground cinnamon.
Cut in 2 tbsp. butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs.)
Whipped
cream
Cream sugar and butter. Add egg; beat well. Stir flour with baking powder, spices, and ¼ teaspoon salt. Add to creamed mixture alternately with milk; beat after each addition. Spread in greased and floured 8 x ½ inch round baking dish. Arrange apples over batter; sprinkle with Crumb Topping. Micro-cook, uncovered, about 7 minutes, giving dish a quarter turn every 2 minutes. Serve warm or cool. Cut in wedges; top with whipped cream.
I was
skeptical at first about baking a cake in the microwave, and wondering if the
cake would bake all the way through, but it really worked. This recipe is
pretty straight forward. I used Honey Crisp apples, and I did cut 2 apples, but
it was a little over 2 cups. You can judge how many apple slices you want to
put on your cake. My apple slices were layered 2 or 3 high. To save money on
spices, I used McCormick’s Ground Allspice, which I already had, versus buying
ground ginger and cloves. When making the crumb topping, I suggest using cold
and not softened butter, or you will have a big, goopy mess on your hands (I
literally did). The recipe says to cook the cake about 7 minutes, but I did 8
minutes total. I suggest cooking the cake 8-9 minutes, or by judgement on how
it looks. My baking dish fit on the microwave turn plate, so I didn’t turn my
dish every 2 minutes, like it says in the recipe. I give this recipe 2 thumbs
up, and highly recommend topping it with whip cream or ice cream. As Mr. Food would say, "Ooh! It's so good!"
 |
| The batter is ready |
 |
| The apple slices and crumb topping |
 |
| Into the microwave it goes |
 |
| Finished dessert, hot out of the microwave |
 |
| It's delicious with whip cream. "Ooh! It's so good!" |
If you want to try similar apple cake recipes, but baked in the oven, check out Stout’s Favorites 2nd Edition cookbook, 1958, via the Internet Archive:
Raw Apple Cake, p. 58: https://archive.org/details/StoutsFavoritesSecondEdition/page/n61/mode/2up
Apple Crumble, p. 65: https://archive.org/details/StoutsFavoritesSecondEdition/page/n69/mode/2up
Spice Cake (without the apples), p. 62: https://archive.org/details/StoutsFavoritesSecondEdition/page/n65/mode/2up
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