Nellie Maxwell takes a back seat to Betty Crocker, beginning in 1926

by Mary Jo David

This month, I decided to circle back to check out 100-year-old recipes from the October editions of the weekly Stockbridge Sun-Times. After all, those early 1900 Sun-Times recipes is where this column’s roots began. Well, I hope you’re sitting down for this news—it looks like, in October 1926, Betty Crocker started to edge out Nellie Maxwell in the world of syndicated food columnists! I guess I knew it would happen sooner or later, but I’m not sure I’m ready to say goodbye to Nellie.

I have to admit, though, Betty Crocker is like a great-aunt to me. My siblings and I were weaned on her recipes; the “Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book” was our mom’s go-to in the kitchen. I decided to use that special cookbook and look for something seasonal to use up some apples I had in the house. So this month’s recipe features Betty Crocker’s Quick Apple Cake from her Picture Cook Book. Like many other recipes in that book, the Quick Apple Cake is based on a “key” recipe called Prize Coffee Cake, which Betty describes as “the foundation costume for many delightful changes to fit every occasion.” You use the “key” ingredients for the base coffee cake, and in this case, add apples and cinnamon to turn it into Quick Apple Cake.

This is a basic, recipe—great for novice bakers. The instructions in the recipe were easy to follow, so I just added a few helpful notes from my baking experience.

• The recipe calls for sifted flour. This confuses some people as they often wonder, “Do I sift before measuring or after?” The rule of thumb is, if a recipe calls for “2 cups of sifted flour,” you sift it before measuring. If it calls for “2 cups flour, sifted,” you measure after you’ve sifted the flour. In other words, if the word “sift” comes before “flour,” sift the flour before measuring. If the word “sift” comes after “flour,” sift the flour after meauring. In this particular recipe, the ingredients call for “sifted flour” so I sifted before measuring. But it also calls for sifting again after you add the baking powder and salt to the sifted flour.
• The recipe calls for a 9-inch square cake pan. I only have an 8-inch pan, so I used that. I’m glad I did. The amount of batter and the limited rising the cake does in the oven makes me think it is much more suitable for an 8-inch square cake pan.
• I sliced the apples thinly for the top of the cake—probably about one-quarter-inch thick. That seemed to work fine for baking, but upon tasting, the apples ended up being the most flavorful part of the cake, so I maybe should have cut them a little bit thicker.
• I always keep a cinnamon/sugar mix in a shaker to put on toasted bagels, etc. Although the recipe does not call for it, I decided to spread half the batter into the pan and then sprinkle that with the cinnamon/sugar I had on hand. After spreading the rest of the batter over that cinnamon/sugar, I then laid out my apple slices on top. Finally, I topped the apples with the cinnamon/sugar combination that the recipe called for. Later, during the taste test, I didn’t think the addition of the cinnamon/sugar in the middle made any difference.
• I baked the recipe for the recommended 25 minutes but the center wasn’t springing back, so I baked for 3 minutes. Although the finished cake wasn’t dry, per se, I think I should have taken it out at 25 minutes.

My resident taste tester and I tend to have differing opinions—on just about everything! Unfortunately, on this we could agree: The finished Quick Apple Cake was OK, but nothing special. That’s not bad, though, considering Betty Crocker was only 5 years old when she came up with this recipe. That’s right folks, the fictional Betty Crocker was created in 1921 and made her national network radio debut on NBC in 1926, the same year she bumped Nellie out of the Stockbridge Sun-Times. I guess she was born a fighter!