So this morning I attended an open house at the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Virginia. Lots of options, lots to consider, but I probably will wait on making a decision for some time. No making snap decisions when it requires that kind of dough. (No pun intended.)
After returning to Mr. Beta's apartment, we began making apple cake from my Nana's own recipe. How's that for heirloom?
The result was so good: fluffy and moist with apple slices baked on top. In fact, without frosting, it could totally pass as a delicious bread. Photos and more after the jump!
Jumped!
So Nana's recipe is very simple. Dry ingredients + wet ingredients + hot= cake. No fancy steps, just mix and bake. The recipe doesn't call for any spices, but since it's getting to that yummy fall time of year, cinnamon and cloves were in order. Also, they're some of my favorite baking spices. I figure, what the hell, cinnamon can only help an apple cake. I was right.
The recipe comes from an old church cookbook that my mom and Nana both contributed to. The directions are kept quite basic. It didn't mention how soft the butter should be or the correct temperature for the eggs. I went with melting the butter because, honestly, it's easiset to deal with that way.
Mr. Beta even got in on the action. He was given the very very important task of slicing the apples. He did a very good job. And since I wasn't doing this all on my onesies-savvies, we have action shots! Witness:
Dynamic old-school manual mixing!
He is the fruit ninja!
Ok, enough silliness. After the apples were chopped I arranged them on top of the cake batter in rings and popped that sucker in the {gas!} oven. There was a little bit of difficulty with baking time because A) it's an oven that is foreign to me and B) fresh fruit means fresh moisture, but it turned out just lovely:
Making it pretty
Piping hot cake, up!
I think what I'm most excited about is how I think adjusting this cake for a lower-sugar diet would be. Applesauce is regularly used to replace sugar, and that would make the apple flavor of this cake stronger. I'm particularly fond of the texture of the apples baked into the top.
Halfway through the evening I decided I was going to make science and turn the rest of the cake that he hadn't already eaten into a bread pudding. This was also deemed a success. And thanks to the light sweetness of the cake, if you sold this unfrosted and in a loaf pan it could probably pass for bread. Cake, bread, and bread pudding out of one recipe. Not bad for something so simple.
My next post will probably be on Wednesday, as I will be baking/filling/torting/stacking/frosting/decorating a cake to take to my Wednesday night Wilton class.
May the cakes be ever in your flavor.
BB
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