Yes, cue the martyr music...while everyone else in the world was sleeping, I was peeling apples, etc..
I like to bake for Shabbat. Once a week, "breakfast" at our house is home-made cake. It's a Shabbat treat.
Anyway, I have this same recipe in a synagogue sisterhood cookbook from about 1970. It's actually printed on large cue-card type cards, and all the recipes are punched with three holes, and in this groovy blue plastic binder with faded gold lettering.
I actually feel a really strong sense of love toward this cookbook because I got it from a high school acquaintance whose mother passed away from cancer. Her father eventually got remarried and they were clearing out the contents of the house.
At the time, we had just moved back to Toronto and had nothing. So, they generously asked me to come over and just pick out stuff from the house that none of the three siblings had wanted.
Her mom's handwriting is in the margins of a lot of the recipe "needs more sugar", or "very nice!" things like that. And I still use the warming tray from them every single Shabbat. I guess it's corny, but I feel like the spirit of a nice, Jewish mom kind of radiates from her things and her comments. I've lost touch with that woman from high school, but if I do every see her, I'll be sure to mention it.
Anyway, apparently this "Jewish apple cake" is a real thing!
I pulled it off Smitten Kitchen this morning and here it is in the Washington Post also.
I think it's "Jewish" mostly because it uses a lot of oil, eggs and then juice instead of milk-keeping it "pareve" which means it can be eaten with either a meat or a dairy meal (Jews separate milk and meat when they eat).
My kitchen sure smelled good this morning. My youngest woke up and said "I smell cinammon.."
That made me so happy.
It's the little things in life that are the big things.
