Apple Cake

November 26th, 2006  | Category: Baked Goods

Apple Cake

It all started with an innocent attempt to bake apple muffins from a new book I bought: Williams Sonoma: Muffins.

It was my father again who brought apples to me and my brother, way more than we can possibly consume. And especially for me (not very fond of eating fresh apples), it was overwhelming. I had to put them into good use. My initial thought was to prepare cans of apple sauce, but then again, I don’t care for apple sauce either.

So instead of baking the same apple tart over and over again, I started measuring the dry ingredients for the apple muffins in the book. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I have put in an extra cup of flour. Adjusting all the other ingredients seemed too daunting to attempt so I said what the heck and started improvising.

One cup of cream cheese, lots of sugar and butter later, there came this wonderfully moist and rich apple cake from the oven, surprising myself as to how good it turned out (I tend to fail if I deviate from recipes in general).

So if you happen to have lots of apples lying around and looking for a crowd pleaser, you should try this.

Apple Cake

Ingredients

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 C (375 F). Core and cube the apples, toss with juice of 1 lemon, 4 tbsp cranberry juice, brown sugar and ground cinnamon. Set aside. Cream the butter, white sugar and cream cheese with the paddle attachment for five-ten minutes until pale and fluffy. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add the eggs and the flour mixture to the creamy mixture, alternating between the two and mix just until all the flour is dissolved. Butter a 10 inch spring form pan, transfer the mixture to the pan and level the top. Bake at 180 C (375 F) for an hour. Reduce the temperature to 150 C (300 F) and bake for another 15 minutes, until the top is browned nicely and a wooden skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. It can be stored for 3-4 days in an airtight container under room temperature.

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Comments

  1. h on December 1st, 2006

    I had a question about the chocolate ganache tart on which you made the powedered sugar stencil. I tried a similar thing but within a couple of hours the sugar disappeared into the chocolate. Did anything like that happen for you? Anyway to avoid it?

    thanks
    -h

  2. Cenk on December 1st, 2006

    Hi H,
    Did you apply the coating of powdered sugar while the ganache was still warm? If so, that is the problem. You would have to at least refrigerate the tart for 4 hours before you apply the stencil. Waiting overnight is best if you can hold on for that long. Thanks for bringing this up. I will post it as a note to that entry immediately.
    Best,
    Cenk

  3. Hulya Senlik Isik on December 1st, 2006

    Hi Cenk,

    I love an apple, extremely. Are you visit my web site? I wrote an e-mail about this. Cafe Fernando is very good, I love it. Thank you…
    Loves,
    Hulya

  4. H on December 1st, 2006

    Hi Cenk
    Thanks for the reply. I did refrigerate it overnight. I am guessing you did not have a similar issue. Its stays on for a couple of hrs but them disappears into the chocolate.

    -h
    p.s: Your stencil work is amazing - I realised how time conusing it was after I started doing it :-)

  5. Cenk on December 1st, 2006

    Thanks H. The stencil I prepared was indeed quite time consuming but it is like teraphy for me.
    To tell the truth, the tart never lasts more than an hour :)
    Maybe you should make a thicker coat of powdered sugar? If that fails too, it might be better to apply the stencil right before you serve it.
    Best
    Cenk

  6. ozlem on December 8th, 2006

    That swan looks delicious. Man, come and make some for me!

  7. Doug Cress on March 3rd, 2007

    Very nicely done! Looks terrific.

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