tennessee stack cake
why this recipe won: good things come to patient cooks, as this cake must sit for an entire day before being served. during that time, the oversized sugar cookies soak up moisture from the apple butter and become tender and cake-like.
recipe history: appalachian specialty known by various names, including apple stack cake, pioneer stack cake, and washday stack cake.
secret ingredient: homemade apple butter.
what our winner says: my grandmother (mom-mom) was born in 1917 into, a family of ten in lone mountain, tenn. baking day was saturday, and dried apple rings were brought down from the attic, where they had been hung every fall, reserved mainly for use in this special cake. the baked cake was placed on the dining room table to cool, then covered with a clean tablecloth to keep the flies off. mom-mom remembers how she loved to go downstairs on sunday morning and see the large hump under the cloth where the stack cake lay. the anticipation was heightened by the fact that the cake could not be eaten until after sunday dinner, and all