The snacking cake—a single-layered, lightly topped charmer—has been getting a lot of attention lately, and with good reason. Unassuming and inviting, the cake sits on the counter ready to go when a kid comes home from school, a neighbor stops by, or someone walks through the kitchen looking for a nibble. Emma Schacke knows the value of offering a delicious, casual bite, especially during holidays when the house is full of guests. Her chewy apple cake with rye flour works perfectly. She adapted the Dutch recipe from her oma (grandmother), Hendrika Hofland, who turned ninety this year. “She has been making it my whole life,” Schacke says. “When I was growing up, we would go visit in the afternoons and each have a little square as a treat when [the adults] had coffee.”
Schacke owns Evergreen Butcher and Baker in Atlanta with her husband, Sean (he’s the butcher). The pair met a dozen years ago while working at the city’s One Eared Stag, then traveled together, cooking and baking in Chicago and Portland, Maine, before moving back to Atlanta and opening the shop in the Kirkwood neighborhood in 2019. Lines form early for her baguettes, morning buns, and, on Sunday, a limited number of cheeseburgers they make with trimmings from the butcher shop. And almost always, Schacke has the apple cake at the ready. Her oma came to the bakery for the first time last year and saw it sitting in the pastry case. “We both got a little emotional,” Schacke says.
Schacke has made a few changes to her grandmother’s recipe, mixing rye flour into the batter for depth and texture. (She’s a fan of the fresh-milled flours coming out of Carolina Ground in Western North Carolina.) You can substitute regular flour if you prefer, but either way, the cake is pleasingly dense and chewy, sort of like if a blondie and a vanilla cake had a baby. The batter is almost a dough, half of which gets patted into a square pan. Next comes a single layer of chopped apples tossed with cinnamon and sugar. She doesn’t cut them too fine, so they don’t turn into jam, and she leaves the peels on for a rustic look. Then the whole thing gets baked longer than most other cakes. “As with most of the stuff we bake at Evergreen, I think the caramelizing helps the flavor,” she says. “The darker golden, the better.”
After the cake rests in the fridge, which helps it set and makes it easier to cut, she trims the edges (save them for nice little snacks) and slices the cake into two-inch squares. To dress things up a bit for a Thanksgiving dinner spread, bake the cake in a round cake pan and serve in wedges with a dollop of whipped cream. Of course, by the time the holiday rolls around, Schacke has already made hundreds of pies and prefers to let someone else handle the dessert table. But that doesn’t mean her grandmother’s cake isn’t invited for more casual duty. “What do you do in the afternoon?” she says. “Just have a little cake and coffee.”
