The People, Places, and the History of The Northern Neck of VA

Sue Dickie’s Butter Sauce

A warm slice of applesauce cake with a generous helping of butter sauce…from two mothers who loved to cook shared by two daughters who love to eat. Bon appetit!!

Ingredients
  • 1 cup sugar
    This sauce is awesome!!! Thank you, Joanne Thompson!

    For you newbies, oleo was a substitute for butter…use the butter and thank me later.

  • 1/2 cup oleo
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Preparation
  1. Boil ingredients until full roll (foaming). Remove from heat and add vanilla.
  2. Serve warm over cake.
  3. Spoon licking mandatory.

TIPS: Use butter for oleo. Mrs. Dickie said 50 minutes which means do not start on high.  Use a medium setting as to not scald milk mixture from the offset.

Shirley M.H. Curry’s Apple Sauce Cake

This cake recipe is from the can of White House Applesauce which you can’t find anymore; the can or the recipe…so glad my mom wrote this out for me! Do like my Mama tells you to do!!!

Ingredients
A copy of my mom's applesauce; my brother has the original.

My mom’s wonderful applesauce cake! This cake is divine.

  • 1 16 oz can applesauce
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup shortening
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp clove
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp allspice
  • 1 cup nuts and raisins each
  • 1/2 cup boiling water
  • 2 tbsp baking soda
  • Pour into a well greased and floured pan
  • 350 degrees for one hour. Use clean toothpick to make sure it is thoroughly cooked. Bake until clean toothpick has no uncooked batter on it.

Cream shortening, applesauce, egg, sugar together, then add dry mixture into the wet mixture.  Add the hot water soda mixture to that, mixing thoroughly. Add nuts and raisins, mixing.  Pour into pan. Lick spoon.

Tips
  1. Add the boiling water and soda together in batter; a must do! 
  2. The nuts are BLACK walnuts, not English walnuts.  Black walnuts have a very distinct flavor and are smaller in size.  Black walnuts hulls can be used as dye.
  3. Use some of the flour mixture to coat nuts and raisins so they will mix better into the batter.
  4. Bake until the cake looks as brown as gingerbread…any lighter and it will be a gummy cake. Trust…gummy cake is not fun!
  5. Serve with Mrs. Dickie’s butter sauce (a recently found treasure).
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