Teddie's Apple Cake

One person can pick a whole big pile of apples in no time at all. Every year I am amazed at the number of apples getting weighed as I leave Samascott's Orchards in Kinderhook N.Y. Friends and relatives are important here but even they may reach their apple limit. Why not bake a down home apple cake with a few apples from your pile? Teddie's Apple Cake immediately comes to mind. The recipe was first published in the N.Y. Times in 1973. I have been making it ever since. The Times reprinted it a few years ago but I still have my yellow, crumbling original.

Butter for greasing pan

3 cups flour, plus more for dusting pan

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp/ baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla

3 cups peeled, cored and thickly slices tart apples, like Honeycrisp or Granny Smith

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup raisins

Vanilla ice cream (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch tube pan. Beat the oil and sugar together in a mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment) while assembling the remaining ingredients. After about 5 minutes, add the eggs and beat until the mixture is creamy.

Sift together 3 cups of flour, the salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Stir into the batter. Add the vanilla, apples, walnuts and raisins and stir until combined. The batter will be very thick and unwieldy. Just keep at it until the fruits and nuts are incorporated.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in the pan before turning out. Serve at room temperature with vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Serves 8

Notes: I have always mixed this cake by hand and it comes out fine. It also freezes well, wrapped securely in plastic wrap and then placed in a heavy plastic freezer bag.