It’s hard to beat a good apple pie. But this apple cake is a close second in the world of apple recipes. This is a dense cake similar. It’s a revised version of an Italian apple cake recipe I saw online with our family’s favorite French strawberry cake that I make in the spring–but slightly less sweet. It comes together very easily and looks beautiful. It’s a great recipe for the years the apple harvest comes in early (like they did this year for us) because it doesn’t have those intense fall flavors. It’s much more of a late summer feel.
Ingredients
- 5-7 apples (depending on size)
- 1/4 to 1/2 c lemon juice (to prevent apples from turning brown)
- 1 t cinammon
- 1 T all purpose flour
- 1.5 c flour
- 2 T baking powder
- 1 t cardamom
- 1 T vanilla
- 1/4 t nutmeg
- 1 stick butter softened
- .75 stick butter
- 1 c brown sugar (divided)
- 2 room temperature eggs
- 1/4-1/2 c sour cream (optional)
- 1 T bourbon or vanilla
Steps
- Preheat oven to 350. While warming up, but 2 T butter in a springform pan and allow to melt while oven is preheating.
- Chop and peel apples into small chunks. Pour lemons over to keep from turning brown.
- 1 T flour and cinammon together over the apples to coat.
- Mix 1/2 c brown sugar, 1/2 stick of butter, and bourbon into a bowl and either microwave or melt together in a saucepan.
- Cream together butter and sugar in a mixer. Then add remaining ingredients one-by-one while mixer continues to run.
- Mix dry ingredients together. Fold the dry ingredients into the bowl with the wet ingredients. It should be pretty thick but creamy.
- By this point your oven should be preheated and butter in springform pan melted. Pour the batter into the pan.
- Cover the batter with apples and press into it. It will be pretty thick.
- Pour melted butter/sugar/bourbon mix over the top, trying to cover entirely but don’t worry if you don’t get everything.
- Bake for 1 hour at 350. Remove the sides of the springform pan.
Notes
- You can absolutely leave out the sour cream. It’s still pretty moist without it.
- You don’t have to use the springform pan. You can also just use a pie plate. It will taste just as good, but won’t have those clean edges.
