It’s apple picking season!

It’s apple picking season, hooray! I love this time of year when there are so many variations of apples and you want to try them all. To celebrate, we’ve decided to make September’s ingredient of the month apples. And so it’s time to get going with your apple tasting, apple picking, and apple recipes. I’m sure this will keep you busy for a while.

I was trying to think of what I wanted to post using apples, when on a hike a friend mentioned an apple cake he made recently. He was explaining the recipe and my mouth was watering for the next 10 minutes. I asked him for the recipe and it was from one of our favorite sites, King Arthur Flour. And so, I went home, bought the ingredients and went to work chopping, mixing, and baking. All was going well until I realized I was making this cake on a Monday night and I had no plans to go anywhere this week except driving the kids to soccer. What was I to do with a whole apple cake! I threatened my blog partner that I was going to drop it at her house under the cloak of darkness so she couldn’t refuse. Not that either of us didn’t want a piece or two – but a whole cake? You’ve seen my dessert posts – you know how much I like dessert!  This was very dangerous.

I decided to see if my husband and son would dig into it for dessert that night and maybe make a dent in it. They are big fans of dark chocolate so I wasn’t sure an apple cake would trump the specialty chocolate in the cabinet. Sure enough, one piece led to two, which lead to many more slivers until much of the cake was gone. Needless to say, it was a huge success. Make this cake, but be sure you have plenty of people to share it with or you might be on a cleanse the next day to ward off the sugar coma!

Ingredients

Cake
2 1/3 cups flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
1/2 cup (8 Tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
4 cups peeled, cored, chopped apples, about 1 1/3 pounds whole apples
1 cup diced toasted walnuts

Frosting
7 Tbsp unsalted butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup milk (regular, soy, or almond)
2 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla extract 

Method

Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour 9 x 13 inch pan.

To make the cake, mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl except the apples and nuts. Beat until well combined. The mixture will be very stiff and maybe even crumbly. Add the apples and nuts and mix until the apples release some of their juices (I did this step by hand and squeezed a little bit as I mixed). Continue to mix until you form a thick batter, somewhere between cookie dough and brownie batter in consistency.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan, smoothing with wet fingers (wet fingers are key as this stuff will stick to you like crazy and you’ll never get it spread across the pan evenly).

Bake cake for 30-45 minutes (I give a wide range because the recipe said to bake for 45 minutes and luckily I checked the cake at 30 minutes and it was done!). Basically, set the timer for 30 minutes, check for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center of the cake to see if it comes out clean. If clean, then take the cake out of the oven and let cool. If it needs more time, continue to bake, checking every few minutes.

To make the frosting, melt the butter in a small pan over medium heat. Stir in the brown sugar and salt and cook, stirring until sugar melts. Add the milk, bring to a boil, and pour into a mixing bowl to cool for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, stir in confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Beat well; if mixture appears too thin, add more confectioners’ sugar. Spread on cake while the frosting is still warm. Serve it up.