French Apple Cake...

I am happy to introduce you to this very french, super moist, rustic, and easy to make apple cake :)

I came across this recipe while I was searching what to bake for a party in one of our friends' house, and there were a couple of specifications about what can be cooked... Firstly, the house we were going was kosher, and the dessert should have to be non-dairy... And secondly, it should not have nuts in it since one of our friends has nut allergy... Difficult for the dessert topic, since almost all desserts have some type of dairy in it and personally I love the crunch of nuts in them... I found this French Apple Cake recipe in David Lebovitz's blog as an option and loved the simplicity of it... Although it has butter in it, butter can be easily substituted with margarine... At the end, I ended up not baking this cake for that occasion, instead baked my carrot cake without the walnuts, but the apple cake was in my mind as a to do since then... I tried the recipe yesterday for our guests who came for brunch, and I am very happy with the result and that I saved it for a good-butter day :)...

Original recipe is Dorie Greenspan's... And according to David Lebovitz, this is a very typique recipe of hers: "not a lot of ingredients, relying on no special techniques or hard-to-find equipment but producing simply spectacular results. The cake is easily mixed up in a bowl, scraped into a cake pan, and in less than the time it takes to run to the pâtisserie for a store-bought cake you can have an authentic French cake right from your own oven."


Here is the original recipe, I did not see any reason to revise the recipe since it works perfectly... And my comments in italic and paranthesis...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
French Apple Cake
One 9-inch (23 cm) cake

Adapted from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan

3/4 cup (110g) flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
4 large apples (a mix of varieties)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
3 tablespoons dark rum (I used artificial rum extract that is sold at baking section in grocery stores. David says rum is "really vital for the taste, and the cake would be not as interesting without it. If you’re avoiding alcohol, you could double to triple up on the vanilla to compensate.")
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 tablespoons (115g) butter, salted or unsalted, melted and cooled to room temperature (I used unsalted butter)

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC) and adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven.

2. Heavily butter an 8- or 9-inch (20-23cm) springform pan and place it on a baking sheet. (The springform pan I used is 22cm)

3. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

4. Peel and core the apples, then dice them into 1-inch (3cm) pieces.

5. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy then whisk in the sugar, then rum and vanilla. Whisk in half of the flour mixture, then gently stir in half of the melted butter. (When he says whisk, I used a hand mixer. When he says "stir", I used a spatula)

6. Stir in the remaining flour mixture, then the rest of the butter.

7. Fold in the apple cubes until they’re well-coated with the batter and scrape them into the prepared cake pan and smooth the top a little with a spatula.

8. Bake the cake for 50 minute to 1 hour, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. (I took mine out at 50 minutes) Let the cake cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edge to loosen the cake from the pan and carefully remove the sides of the cake pan, making sure no apples are stuck to it.

Serving: Serve wedges of the cake just by itself, or with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream. (We ate with crème fraîche, and it really works well with the cake)

Storage: The cake will keep for up to three days covered. Since the top is very moist, it’s best to store it under a cake dome or overturned bowl. (I covered with plastic wrap, it worked)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bon Appetit! I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did...