Madge Bullington's Famous Apple Cake

YUM!

Can you tell it's apple season?  My tree produced a bumper crop this year, despite our exceptional drought. The late, late, late summer rains were just enough to put the apple crop over the top.  The apple tree was planted the year I moved to this house (8 years ago) and this is my first harvest.  I've enjoyed it so much.  It has been a challenge, however, to find ways to use up all these apples.  Thankfully, I've had enough to share with friends and family AND squirrels AND birds AND rabbits.

In any event, my mother has talked about this apple cake made by a woman who used to go to our church when I was a kid.  Madge Bullington.  I'm sure at one time I knew her by sight, but I'm having a hard time putting a face to that name these days.  In any event, her reputation for apple cake lives on.  And anyone who knows me knows that I never pass up "church food".  Whatever my beliefs or lack thereof, I hold no prejudice against Christian cooks.

Without further ado, here we go.....

Apple Cake

2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1.25 cups Crisco oil  (oops, I used Crisco shortening!)

2.5 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder

3 cups apples (use Macintosh or Granny Smith, not Red Delicious or Rome)
add lemon juice if not tart enough
1.5 cups nuts

Cream first four ingredients.  Combine and sift the next four ingredients and add to the creamed mix.  Add the apples, lemon juice, and nuts and fold into the mix.  Bake at 350 for one hour.  The dough will be like cookie dough until you add the apples.

It does not appear that using shortening as the fat instead of oil causes any problems at all.  Come to think of it, how would you "cream" together something that contained oil and not shortening? I think maybe they intended shortening and maybe my mother wrote the recipe down wrong.  I also used five apples and that ended up making a short 4 cups of sliced apples.  I threw them all in anyway.  No harm, no foul.  The cake is moist and delicious.  I cooked it for exactly one hour, which was just how long it took for a toothpick to come out clean.  I have one thing to say:  this is going in the freezer ASAP before I eat it all!