Easter brunch: Apple cake, or shall we have rhubarb?

his apple cake has a long, long history in our family. I can't remember when it was first discovered in an old family favorite cookbook, An Apple A Day, but I've made it more times over the decades than I can count.

With family headed into town this weekend, it seemed only right (well, and Shelby made mention of it...) to bust out an apple cake move or two... so Sunday morning for Easter brunch we did just that! And of course, just to mix things up, I made a rhubarb one as well, with a little different make-up: fruit on the bottom. Clever, that. And yummy too.

The original, though I went a little light on the apples. There's nowhere near 2 cups here...
sorry, Shelby!

Rhubarb variation: delicious and definitely a make-again!

The batter is adapted from the original sufficiently to have its own name!

Brunch fruit cake
1.5 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup quick rolled oats
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup melted cinnamon
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
2 cups apple, thinly sliced, or another fruit of your choice...

Combine the dry ingredients, mix well. Add butter, egg and milk, beat well. Pour into a greased 8-inch square baking pan; stand apple slices in batter.

Topping
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup quick oats
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
Combine and sprinkle over top of the batter.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Rhubarb variation: Wash and chop 3 cups rhubarb (about a half dozen stalks). Toss with 1 Tbsp. lemon juice and and 2/3 cup sugar. Put in the bottom of an 8-inch pan and spread the batter over the top. If desired, spread the topping over the batter and bake as directed above.

After a brunch of baked eggs, tater tots, cake(s), fruit and juice, it was time for a little egg hunting. Happily, a new-ish brood of bunnies was out in the yard, and welcomed us before scampering off to their safe zone (the junipers).

Here is Lucy, sneaking up on a wee baby bunny.

Maizy with her loot, and a little gray bunny from Aunty Sher.

There was quite a bit of happy cousin time on the trampoline.
Right now the girls are dominating, with grins!

And then there was bouncing, lots of bouncing. 

It was a lovely family weekend, with lots of sunshine, a pleasant walk through the Whitman Mission (in sunshine, no less!) more than a couple of naps, some rolicking Tudors time (for the adult ladies, late into the night), and even a little sunshine for the egg hunting... Thanks for making the trek over, Goerlitz Jrs., we enjoyed our time with you immensely.

Joys of autumn: Apple cake!

I have been wanting a very apple-y cake for some time now--something with more fruit than cake. I've been on this fruity kick through the summer, and experimented with plums that way too... (one of those unposted recipes I tease with every once in awhile...)

As we were headed over to Seattle last weekend, I wanted to contribute something to a lunch that my brother and sister-in-law had invited some friends over for, and so offered to bring along an apple cake. Now, I had to get it together!

I have an old apple cake standby recipe in the legendary (in my childhood, anyway) Apple A Day cookbook, but it's more of a breakfast cake than a dessert proper. Since I wanted the fruit to be plentiful throughout the cake, I thought getting a visual on the recipe would be essential, so I went rummaging through tastespotting.com, which I haven't done in a while, and was able to quickly come up with a lovely looking option from a food blog, Kosher Cambembert.

I neglected to take a picture of it once it had been baked, so head on over to see how Kosher's turned out. Mine was a little "earthier" looking, as I used whole wheat flour, but you'll get the general idea. And it was yummy!

Apple Cake
For apples:
4 apples – I used a variety (1 each of Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith and Honeycrisp)
Lemon juice to prevent apples from browning as you cut
2 Tbsp butter
1-2 Tbsp sugar (or to taste)

For cake batter:
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
2-3 Tbsp demerara sugar (optional--I didn't use...)

Preheat oven to 350º F. Grease and flour a 9-inch cake pan, springform or square pan. (If you want to plate this, use a springform; otherwise, just serve it out of the pan.)

Peel and core the apples, then cut into about 12 slices. Sprinkle with lemon juice (you don’t need much, maybe a tablespoon or so for 4 apples) while the others are being sliced to prevent browning. You can see my nifty method below. I don't get to use that handy dandy corer-peeler nearly enough during apple season, so I hauled it out!



Heat butter in pan over low heat and add apples and 1-2 T white sugar. Stir for about 10-15 minutes until apples soften. Some of the liquid will soak into the apples, but if too much of it starts to evaporate, then turn the heat down.

While the apples are on the stove top, mix together the remaining ingredients (except for the demerara sugar)—flour, sugar (the 3/4 cup), eggs, oil, baking powder and vanilla. No mixer is required; you can just mix everything by hand even though the batter is quite thick.

Add half the warm apples (juices and all) to the batter and mix. Then pour into the prepared pan and spread the batter evenly with a spatula. Arrange the remaining apple slices on the top of the batter as decoratively as possible (though even a mishmash will look nice... which I did!).



Sprinkle the cake with demerara sugar if you’d like and bake for 1 hour.
This one is definitely a make-again. It was just the right amount of fruit, and not too sweet (though the ice cream was lovely alongside!). We had a wonderful risotto lunch with an autumn salad, topped off by cake! And made some new friends in the process... what could be better? I can't think of anything!