We hosted 17 people for Easter this year, and we were lucky enough that the main courses and many side items were taken care of by our guests. However, we wanted to provide some desserts. I wanted to make something that would not be as sweet as all the other goodies, since in the end, we had about 15 other desserts. While browsing through one of my favorite food blogs, smittenkitchen.com, I found a recipe for Apple Cake. Since my dad really likes this dessert, I decided to attempt the recipe, with some tweeks. I have found that typically, apple cake or jewish apple cake, made for purchase in bakeries tend to skimp on the apples and can be quite dry. I added a couple more apples than the recipe called for and I eased up on the cinnamon just a tad.
What you need….
7 apples (I chose McIntosh apples)
1 tablespoon cinnamon (I used a little less than 1 tablespoon).
5 tablespoons sugar
2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
Tube pan (angel food cake pan)
First, you want to peel, core and chop apples into chunks. My father-in-law graciously assisted by peeling the apples for me. I chose a combination of half inch and one inch chunks to have some variety in the texture. Stir the cinnamon and sugar together in a bowl. I used a fork to break up the cinnamon and blend the cinnamon and sugar. Once, chopped, toss the apples with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the dry ingredients…flour, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients…oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones. It will be a pretty thick mixture at this point. Then add eggs, one at a time.
Pour half of batter into prepared pan. It may not look like much batter is in the pan at this point, but it is deceiving. This cake will increase in size while cooking. Then add half of apples to top of batter in the pan. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and add the remaining apples on top. Again, looks are deceiving, and the batter and apples will look pretty short compared to the size of the pan. But I assure you that this is correct. Bake for about 1 ½ hours. It took about the full 1 ½ hours to cook. To test that the cake is done, you will need something larger than a toothpick because the cake will have some depth. I suggest using a wooden shish kabob skewer if you do not have another kind of tester.
The result….a delicious and moist apple cake! The best I have ever had.
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