Apple cake is one of my favourite cakes, especially when flavoured generously with cinnamon. I had been craving for it for some time and would drag my husband to cafes just to have a piece of the apple cake. But as my luck would have it none of the cafes which earlier used to keep it, had it. So, finally I gave in to my temptation and baked this cake. I have baked apple cupcakes during my pre-blogging days and this time I wanted to try a recipe for moist cake .
The recipe I tried did have some problems, it took too long to bake and the people who had tried this recipe had listed those problems under the original blogger. But I reached the original blog only when I was almost done with the baking ,so I missed those tips.
In spite of the increased baking time, the cake turned out very delicious. It was a moody cake, tasted different every time I had it. I liked it best when it was just out of oven, though it was difficult to cleanly slice it . I like my apple cake warm, but when I reheated it after storing it overnight, it didn't taste as good. Without heating, and just out of the refrigerator it again was very delicious and my sister and husband liked it more when it was cold. It also got cleanly sliced after being refrigerated overnight.
The best part of the cake was the crunchy cinnamon brown sugar streusel which also gave the cake sweet little dimples and hence the name.
Ingredients
For the Cake
1-1/2 cups Greek- yogurt, well-stirred [ I used homemade curd]
2/3 cup olive oil [ I used vegetable oil]
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 small tart apples, such as Granny Smith, [ I used regular red apples]
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp powdered cinnamon
For the Cinnamon Streusel
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
Preparation
- Heat oven to 350 F/176 C. Generously grease a 9x13-inch baking pan with baking spray or olive oil.
- Whisk together yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl.
- Peel and core apples, and chop into chunks about 1/2-inch across. You should end up with 3-1/2 to 4 cups of apples. Stir chopped apple into the liquid ingredients.
- Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon right into the liquids and stir just until no lumps remain.
- For the cinnamon streusel : In a small separate bowl, mix remaining 2 teaspoons cinnamon with the brown sugar and butter.
- Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Cover with half of cinnamon-brown sugar mixture, dropping it on batter in small lumps. Cover with remaining cake batter, then top with last half of cinnamon-brown sugar mixture.
- Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, covering with foil if top gets too brown. When a tester comes out clean, transfer pan to a cooling rack and let it sit for at least 15 minutes before cutting.
Now the problems that were encountered by others and me.
- Baking time: In my case It took 30 minutes more for tester to come clean. The original blogger attributes that this could be if the yogurt was liquidy and she suggest draining. My curd was liquidy and as I said before I reached the original blog only after I finished baking. Since I had to increase the baking time, I covered it with foil to avoid too much browning. The browning was perfect once I did so.
- Slicing Difficulty: I still had the difficulty in slicing after having left it for more than hour. It sliced clean only after refrigerating.
- The photo is of the next day , so you can see that I didn't face the issue of cake turning like a bread pudding which some other users faced.
- Some users suggested cutting olive oil I didn't face any issues with vegetable oil.
