What is the right thing to do when you have a large bucket of baking apples in your kitchen?? Yes, it's wise to take some butter, eggs and milk out of the fridge and combine them with flour and a LOT of cinnamon. A perfect apple cake on a cold fall day can't exist without cinnamon. A LOT of cinnamon.
Some weeks ago I was reading the blog of David Lebovitz and found a nice picture of an apple kugelhupf. So I baked it, immediately. With a LOT of cinnamon. It turned out wonderfully soft, spicey and fruity. I have to admit, that I was missing some raisins. Although David's recipe doesn't mention any raisins and this simple apple cake is pretty delicious even without raisins, I totally missed them. As soon as possible I'm going to bake this cake again, but raisins definitely have to be in there.
Apple Spice Cake
adapted from David Lebovitz
apples
30gm butter
4 large baking apples (or more)
40gm sugar
Melt butter in a medium size saucepan on medium heat. Add apples and cook until they turn golden. Add sugar, stir and continue cooking until apples are nicely browned and glazed. Remove from heat and let cool a bit.
batter
170gm butter or margarine (I cut down to 140gm)
200gm sugar (original recipe says 350gm)
4 eggs
1 cup dates, in pieces (I skipped this as I didn't have any dates)
420gm flour
2 Tabsp baking powder
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 Tabsp cinnamon
120g milk (original recipe says yogurt)
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a large bundt pan.
Beat butter and sugar using a mixer on high speed until fluffy. Beat in eggs until very light and bubbly. Add milk and beat in as well.
Sieve over flour, baking powder and spices. Quickly beat in just until incorporated.
Gently fold in the cooled apples.
Bake for about 45 - 50 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes, then take out of the pan.
Let cool completely.
Dust with icing sugar if desired.
