Although receipts including cider as an ingredient are known in England since the 14th Century, cider cake seems to have first obtained significant popularity in the USA, the earliest version we know being in 'Mrs. Hale's New Cook Book' published in Philadelphia in 1857. She gives just;
Cider cake is very good; to be baked in small loaves 1 ½ lb of flour, half a pound of sugar, quarter of a pound of butter, half a pint of cider, 1 tea spoonful of pearl ash, spice to your taste. Bake till it turns easily in the pans I should think about half an hour
Cider Cake
Image: Alex Bray...
Original Receipt from 'Leeds Mercury' - Thursday 12 February 1914Cider Cake.
Try delicious cider cake recipe, culled from old household guide, reads as follows: -Required, one cupful of butter, two cupfuls sugar, three eggs, four cupfuls of flour, one teaspoonful of allspice, teaspoouful of baking soda and cider. Cream the butter and sugar and add the eggs well beaten. Then add the flour and spice and soda and enough cider to form a stiff batter. Bake in a hollow tin. It makes a well chosen dessert when served fresh and unfrosted with nuts and raisins. For all sorts of puddings a cider sauce can used. It is made by rubbing together one small tablespoonful of flour and two tablespoonfuls of butter, and adding cupful brawn sugar and two-thirds of a cupful of boiling cider