My Favorite Apple Cake

Now that we’re into apple season, it seemed like a good time to revisit this apple cake that I’ve made at least a dozen times by now.

I’d seen this recipe on Smitten Kitchen and then my cousin called raving about this great apple cake she’d made. She was right!

Apple Cake Recipe

For the apples:

• 6 apples, McIntosh or whatever looks good
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 5 tablespoons white or light brown sugar

For the cake:

• 2 3/4 cups (360 grams) flour
  1 tablespoon baking powder
  1 teaspoon fine salt
  1 cup vegetable oil (or mix of butter, olive oil etc.)
  2 cups sugar
  1/4 cup orange juice
  2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  4 large eggs

Heat oven to 350°. Butter a tube pan (angel food, bundt).

Peel, core and chop apples into 1-inch chunks. Toss with cinnamon and 5 tablespoons sugar and set aside.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice, sugar, vanilla and eggs.

Mix wet ingredients into dry ones; scrape down the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.

Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apples (and their juices) over it. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top.

Bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool completely before running knife between cake and pan, and unmolding onto a platter. Serve and enjoy!

My verdict:

Great apple cake! After we devoured a couple of slices of it, I cut it in quarters and stuck most of it in the freezer. Two days later, most of it has already been pulled from the freezer (not to worry, got more apples from the CSA). Slightly warmed up, it makes a great breakfast too! Now I’ve made it twice and it still hasn’t lasted a week.

I used a combo of McIntosh and Macons which worked well, you probably want to avoid the mushier apples like Delicious. Since we’re not an orange juice drinking household, I just bought an orange and juiced half of it.

The recipe calls for a cup of vegetable oil and suggests that you can use olive or coconut oil and/or butter. Because butter makes everything better, I used one stick of butter, melted and topped it off with vegetable oil. Might try an olive oil-butter mix the next time.

Updates:

Because of the plethora of apples, I ended up making this about five times. Olive oil was the least successful batch so I went back to butter and vegetable oil. Everyone who has made this or tasted it loves it. Give it a shot. More updates: I make this cake at least a couple of times every fall and you should too!

Just did the best one ever, drizzling some Cara-Sel, salted caramel sauce over the apples in the bottom layer–spectacular!