My Great-Grandma Anderson's Apple Sauce Cake Recipe...

So, for Christmas, I've decided to make a book of my Grandma Anderson's recipes (including a bunch of family favorites from as far back as my great-grandmother - maybe even farther). To make it a really cool book, I'm going to make some of the recipes and photograph them for the book. Today, I made the first one - Apple Sauce Cake, from the kitchen of my Great-Grandma Anderson. (I feel kind of like Julie from the "Julie and Julia" movie. Except that my Grandma isn't quite Julia Child (the only difference is that she didn't cook French food! She is every bit as good of a cook! Oh, and much prettier, too!) See?

Exhibit A - Julia Child

Exhibit B - Georgina Anderson (my grandma)

And I'm most definitely NOT going to cook over 500 recipes in a year. Just one, here and there.)

So, without stalling one more second... here are the ingredients...

See that green bowl? Yep, I decided that to make this authentic, I couldn't use my mixer. I did everything by hand. Except the applesauce. I'm sure Great-Grandma made her own applesauce, too! Here is the recipe...

2 cups cake flour (I think that's just all-purpose flour - that's what I used)
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. cinnamon (or more)
1/2 cup raisins (my kids don't like raisins, and I had a TON of apples that needed to be used, so I peeled, cored, and diced 3 small apples to use in place of raisins)
1/2 t. vanilla (straight from Mexico, OF COURSE)
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg - beaten
1 cup applesauce, slightly sweetened

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add the beaten egg and vanilla. In a different bowl, add soda to the applesauce and stir until foamy (my never did go foamy. Oh well.) Add to the butter/sugar mixture. Sift dry ingredients together and add to the wet ingredients. Add raisins, or in our case apples, and nuts (if desired). We used chopped up candied pecans. Bake in a greased and floured 8x8 pan, at 350 degrees, for 45 minutes, or until knife stuck in the middle of cake comes out clean.

Enjoy...

Oh, man, this was soooooo good. Very moist, and just look at those chunks of apples, straight from my inlaws' tree. *Sigh*