VPR Cooks

Hot Maple-Apple Cake

"One of my favorite maple recipes was invented by two great Vermont cooks, Beatrice Vaughan and Janet Greene. It is from their booklet "Real, Old-Time Yankee Maple Cooking," published by The Stephen Greene Press in Brattleboro in 1969. I designed the book working with Robert Dothard, a great book designer in Guilford. The book is long since out of print, but I find that "very used" copies are still available in our local used book stores and on Amazon."- Andy, Guilford

3/4 cup maple syrup
4 medium apples, cored, peeled, and sliced
2 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. each nutmeg, cloves, and allspice
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup melted butter
1 egg, beaten

Cook the apple slices in the maple syrup over low heat until the apples are tender; cool. Sift flour with salt, soda, and spices. Combine water and the melted butter. Stir in the sifted ingredients and add the apple mixture. Mix well, then add the beaten egg. Stir lightly to blend, pour into greased and floured 9-x-11 pan. Bake in 375 oven for about 30 minutes, or until cake tests done.

Serves 12. Serve warm with any desired pudding sauce - authors Bea and Janet like a simple lemon sauce.

Bea and Jan also had these suggestion for using maple syrup:

• A favorite drink of the early settlers was made by boiling maple sap down to three-fourths of its original volume, then fermenting it with yeast and flavoring it with spruce twigs.
• For an emergency dessert, try tapioca cream pudding with a sauce of maple syrup and chopped nuts.
• A favorite old-time dessert was plain hot boiled rice with maple syrup poured generously over each serving.
• Our forefathers in the Green Mountains liked Frumenty, a pudding made of barley and maple sugar and boiled in a bag of water.
• Warm maple syrup with rum added to taste makes a superb sauce for vanilla ice cream.