I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I love using family recipes. It’s easy to feel a real connection with your family, even members you never got to meet, when you read their handwriting, follow their instructions, and enjoy food that they once prepared for their family and friends.
This recipe is from my grandmother’s recipe book. Grandma Joan was my mother’s mother and grew up on a farm in Waihola, near Dunedin. She had three brothers, and their father had died when the children were teenagers, so the boys took over the management of the farm, and Grandma would have helped her mother at home. This is Grandma Joan – I think this photo was probably taken in Dunedin in the mid-1940s.
Grandma married my grandfather in the 1950s, and she moved to his family farm at Taieri Beach (also near Dunedin), where they raised their family and farmed for many years. This picture is of my grandparents on their honeymoon:
My mum spotted this handwritten recipe in Grandma’s book and suggested I try it. I don’t remember Grandma making it when I was a little girl; it isn’t a family favourite or anything – but I imagine Grandma would have made it for the farm staff many times. She must have been pretty familiar with it, at any rate – the recipe in her book is just a scribbled list of ingredients and the words, “usual method”!
This isn’t a decadent meal of a slice – like most of our every day farm baking recipes, it makes a delicious but fairly plain sweet to enjoy after lunch or on a tea break. It pays to have a few recipes like this in your book; they’re simple to make, well liked by most people, and while I wouldn’t describe the shortcake as exactly “healthy”, you don’t feel like you need to put an hour in at the gym to compensate for eating a slice!
Grandma Joan’s Apple Shortcake
¼ lb (115g) butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1½ cups, plus 1 Tbsp (230g) flour
1½ tsp baking powder
two small apples, thinly sliced (unpeeled is fine)
2 tsp sugar, extra
icing sugar, to dust
Preheat the oven to 200°(c). Grease and/or line either a 26x17cm slice/brownie pan, or a round cake tin, depending on your preference.
Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat again. Add the sifted flour and baking powder, and mix to a soft dough. Add a little milk if the mixture seems very dry (I didn’t need any). Halve the dough (I find it easiest to weigh it; each half should weigh around 250g). Roll the first half out and press it into your greased tin.
Layer the slices of apple over the dough, and sprinkle with 1 tsp of the extra sugar. Roll out the remaining dough and lay this on top of the apple slices. Prick with a fork and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tsp of sugar.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the dough is lightly golden and smells cooked. Leave to cool in the tin before dusting with icing sugar and cutting into squares, bars, or, if you used a round cake tin, wedges.
What a lovely post. I really enjoyed reading your grandmother’s story and seeing her pictures, and I’m looking forward to trying her recipe.
Lovely to have vintage photos from your Grandmother. I have one written in the back of a book from my great grandmother for a Christmas cake recipe as written for wartime rations
I just made this – so simple and so delicious! I love that it has only has a modest amount of butter and one egg – it makes something lovely out of not much at all. On a more random note, not sure if you got my email about bloggers get-together last week? A bit late now but let us know if you’re keen for future get togethers!
Hi Libby,
So glad you made it! And I didn’t get your email actually (?), but thanks for thinking of me – and I would definitely be keen for future get togethers! Would love to meet you guys in person sometime
Hi,
Just tried out your recipe and loved it. My kids did to. We’re from Gorey, Co Wexford in Ireland and have just picked apples from our trees and were wondering what we could make with them. We have already made 16 jars of apple chutney. Thanks for posting your recipes and sharing them with us.
Trish
Love old cookbooks, sadly my Gran’s went missing! Great to share those old recipes and to keep them alive, love the old photos too
Mmm, shortcake is sooo under-rated! My friend Holly brought a feijoa shortcake to a potluck and I realised what I’d been missing out on. Yours looks wonderful! The perfect texture (to me anyway!).
Reblogged this on d’liteful cravings and commented:
This is amazing and brings back such great memories personally. I’d love to make this, its so simple and so gorgeous!
Glad you like it! Hope your readers enjoy it, too.
Love apples in dessert, and in wonderful buttery shortcake…this looks so comforting, heart-warming. That part on the ‘usual method’ is hilarious, but SO true!
Thanks for your comment! It is a comforting favourite
I saw this recipie over at Down to Earth last week and I’ve made it 3 times already,once using rhubarb.My husband loves it so that’s how I gauge a successful recipe.It’s so easy with ingredients usually on hand,I have one sitting cooling on the counter right now. I will test it out on my son today. Thanks so much for posting it.
I love the story of your grandma and her cookbook.
Thanks for your lovely comment! I’m really pleased the recipe is working for you, and especially that your family is enjoying it! Best wishes for many more successful bakes