A is for Apple. Also Autumn.

 My friend Bitsy makes fun of me for saying Autumn. She says there is no such season in Texas, it’s just Fall. But having lived in upstate New York for a few years, I got used to an actual Autumn. With a capital A. Fall or Autumn, today felt like a good day to make this French Apple Cake. 

This recipe came to me via an email from Epicurious, but it’s from thekitchen.com. The recipe was in a blog post by Marcella Dilonardo, who in turn says it was inspired by a recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table. Phew, that’s a lot of credits but I think I covered everybody! Here’s the link to the recipe / post on The Kitchn, it has a video and EVERYTHING! https://www.thekitchn.com/french-apple-cake-22943649

So before we start, lemme just tell ya that the weather outside is pretty craptastic today. There’s a Tropical Depression in the Gulf named Beta because, this year being the full whack-job that is 2020, the hurricane season has been so active that the National Weather Service ran out of names and so had to start in on the Greek alphabet. So it’s Beta.  Is it going to be like a tester TD? I don’t know. Nothing surprises me this year, and we have a whole quarter of it left to go! Whack. Job.

Ok, so I decided to up this cake a little. As in, make it bigger. Not that it doesn’t look absolutely perfect as is, and who am I to question Epicurious, The Kitchn, and especially Dorie Greenspan?! A nobody cooking in her little apartment kitchen and writing a blog that nobody reads, that’s who. The reasons I decided to up this cake had to do with the size of my apples (stop snickering like a 12-year-old boy, I can hear you) and the size of my pan (really...stop it). 

I wanted to use Honeycrisp apples because I love baking with them - they’re sweet but not too, and they hold up marvelously in baking. However, in the entire bin of Honeycrisp apples at the market there was nary a medium sized one, and the recipe called for three medium apples. I guess because everything has to be mutant sized in Texas, but I ended up with three Big Apples.

Next, the pan. As I’ve mentioned (ad nauseum), all my kitchen baking supplies are in storage far, far away. What I have is what I’ve borrowed or a few inexpensive things I’ve purchased to get by temporarily.  So the one and only cake pan I have is a nine-inch round, as opposed to the eight-inch round called for in the recipe. Ok, yes - I could have used two-and-a-half apples and had a flatter cake. What fun is that? None. More cake? Uh, yes please! 

Doubling the recipe would have been too much, so I did a super technical thing called “One-And-A-Half” ing it. Fancy, right? I know.  Original recipe calls for a cup of flour, I used a cup and a half. Three eggs instead of two, and so on. Everything was easy until I got to the brown sugar. Recipe called for three-quarters of a cup. How do I figure out what half of three-quarters is without using Layer Two Math? Well, I’ll tell ya how! My sister loaned me our mom’s old yellow Tupperware measuring cups and happily the set includes not just the standard fourth, third, half and full cups, but a lovely three-quarter cup as well. So you take that puppy and fill it...one and a half times. Sigh. Thank you Tupperware. You know me so well.

Honestly, the most time consuming part of this whole thing was peeling,coring and dicing the apples. The recipe didn’t specify the dice size, but judging by the photos I guessed about 1/3” to 1/2”. Ish.

After that’s done, melt the butter...one and a half sticks, see what I did there (bwahhahahaha)...and add it to the eggs and sugar:

Add the rum and vanilla and mix. If you don’t want to use alcohol, look for another recipe. This one relies quite a bit on the flavor of the rum. I guess you could substitute rum flavoring, but it’s just not the same. Seriously, there are many other good recipes out there for fresh apple cake, if not French Apple Cake.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, and add into the wet ingredients. Use a wooden spoon here and just incorporate - don’t over mix it.

Next, fold in the diced apples, and again take care not to over mix it...

Everybody in the pool! Uh, pan. 

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 50 minutes. This is longer than the original recipe calls for, adjusted for additional amount of batter.

Oh. My. Garsh. I wish you were here to smell this! It’s divine, I tell you. I might turn up the air conditioning so I can declare it Sweater Weather! Ok, let the cake cool for ten or fifteen minutes and then turn it out onto a plate. A pretty plate. Not like this plate. Again, people - working with what I have!!

Now comes the hard part: let it cool completely before you slice into it. And add a sprinkle of confectioners sugar on top of it first, you savage.

Oh, that’s much better. Beautiful and delicious, one of my absolute favorite combinations. You know, I have no idea what makes this apple cake a French Apple Cake, but if Dorie and The Kitchn say it’s French, then ce doit être!

❤️ Bonnie