Apple Pie Cake

It’s right about this time of year that my blood starts turning to into custard because – oh yeah – it’s finally getting cold enough to scoff puddings and pies again!  I love pies, but when it comes to custard?  Meh, I’m more of a hot, strawberry blancmange kinda girl  if I’m being totally honest (I’m an 80s kid through and through, okay?).  Sunny, on the other hand, is an absolute super fan who likes to drown his desserts in the stuff and would happily drink it on its own if I let him 😉  When it comes to the dessert itself, he does love a good old apple pie or crumble but would probably admit that at the end of the day they’re just a vehicle for the custard, and as for me I get a bit bored baking the same old apple dishes every year.  So, I’ve been on a mission to come up with an apple pie that’s so damn good it upstages the custard.

Enter the apple pie cake.  There’s no crust, just a fluffy, moist sponge, with juicy, cinnamon-spiced apples and it be eaten either hot or cold – unlike old humble apple pie.  I adapted the recipe from the fantastic buttermilk plum cake I baked over the summer and came up with a keeper.  🙂

Apple Pie Cake

Ingredients

• 3 Apples of any variety (I used Pink Lady), peeled, cored and thinly sliced into segments.
• Juice of Half a Lemon
• 125g Butter
• 175g Caster Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 100g Plain Flour
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 50g Ground Almonds
• 100ml Buttermilk

1. Boil your apple segments in lemon juice and water until they’re just soft enough for a knife to pierce them, then leave to cool.
2. Set your oven to 170° and grease a 20cm open bottom cake tin.  Sprinkle with a little flour and then set aside.
3. In your mixing bowl, cream together the butter and 125g of the sugar.  Stir in the egg.
4. In a separate bowl sift together most of the dry ingredients; that’s the flour, baking powder, ground almonds and 1 tsp of cinnamon.  Combine with the wet ingredients.
5. Stir in the buttermilk to make a light batter.
6. Pour the batter into your cake tin and smooth over the surface.  Arrange the apples on top in a spiral starting about a centimeter away from the edge of the tin.  Make sure you overlap them so that when the cake rises in the oven you’re not left with any gaps.
7. Before you pop the cake in the oven sprinkle over the remaining sugar and teaspoon of cinnamon.  Bake for 50 minutes and then serve up warm with custard or ice cream.  Add some toffee sauce to turn it into a toffee apple cake!
   

I honestly don’t think I’ll be baking any apple pies this year, it’ll just be this cake over and over and over again.  If you want to see me making it, check out my IGTV for the recipe in video form.  ♡