SemiAntics

We tried out a new recipe this Christmas. It was a little ironic because the recipe is supposed to be a Hanukkah recipe. Anyways…we tried our hands at making Apple Cake. Nathaniel and I, being the almost-teetotalers that we are, were very excited that the recipe called for Apple Brandy. This necessitated a trip to the ABC store where a bottle of Captain Apple Jack was purchased. Unfortunately, neither Nathaniel nor I read the recipe very carefully, sooo we missed the part where it said we only needed 1/2 teaspoon of brandy. That fact put a damper on our $15 purchase and the bragging associated with it. Oh well, I guess we’ll be making a lot of Apple Cakes. We have a lot of brandy to use up, and the cake turned out really well.

The recipe came from the New York Times.

Babette Friedman’s Apple Cake

2 sticks unsalted butter, more for greasing the pan

1 1/3 cups plus 1 Tablespoon sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

4 Gala or other flavorful apples, peeled, cored and each cut into 8 slices

1/2 teaspoon of Calvados or apple brandy

1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch springform pan.

2. Mix the butter (softened), 1 1/3 cups of sugar, and salt together until blended. Add eggs and mix until smooth. Fold in flour and baking powder and thoroughly mix. Fold in a few apples (we folded in two). Spread batter evenly in pan.

3. In a large bowl, toss the remaining apples with the brandy, ginger and cinnamon. Arrange the apple slices in closely fitting concentric circles on top of dough. Sprinkle 1 Tablespoon sugar over the apples.

4. Bake until the apples are golden and tender and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake dough comes out clean. About 50 minutes (It was over an hour in our oven).

Our Notes

Next time we will use more brandy on the apples. We used 1 Tablespoon this time. Next time–1/3-1/2 cup?

In the batter–more apples in smaller chunks.

We think it’s more attractive to leave some space between the apples on the top, rather than to scrunch them all up together without any space.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 27th, 2009 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.