If you are looking for a quick and simple way to impress your friends this holiday season, you must try this Simple apple cake. Made with simple ingredients, this cake packs a lot of flavor and is perfect for after dinner or with coffee. The original recipe is of Swedish origin but I’ve updated it a bit by adding vanilla and butter, it is delicious!
I was at Costco and came across these HUGE honey-crisp apples (shown above). I had to have them for this recipe. When I brought them home, they were sooo big that they didn’t even fit in my apple slicer. Ha! So I cut them by hand. You don’t want to cut them too thin because then they end up becoming baked chips on top of the cake. Instead, you want them roughly a 1/4″ thick so that they retain some moisture but are thin enough to easily cut through, also the moisture from the apples helps keep your cake nice and moist as well. Yum Yum!
Take the apples and put them into a small bowl. Add sugar and cinnamon to coat the apples and stir until all of the apples are coated evenly. Then set aside.
Take a large mixing bowl and add the eggs, sweet cream butter, vanilla and sugar. Make sure the butter is softened. Mix with an electric mixer until the ingredients are well mixed. Next, add the flour and cardamom mixed together to the batter, in batches slowly, I use a sifter as well to help. Your batter should have beautiful air bubbles like in the picture below.
Once your batter and your apples are ready, you can prep your baking pan. For this recipe, I always use a tart pan because it allows the edges to be just slightly crisp and leave the middle of the cake super moist. For easy clean up and to get the cake easily out of the pan after it has finished cooking, I always spray the pan with PAM and then lay parchment paper on top of that. Next, I add my batter to the tart pan. The PAM helps keep the parchment paper from moving when adding the batter to the pan.
Arrange the apples any way you like. I always try and stay away from putting too many apples in the middle because since the apples are so moist, it will be impossible to tell whether the cake is done or not.
Just before putting this into the oven, make sure you brush the top with an egg wash. The egg wash helps to get the rustic golden brown top. Bake for 35 minutes and let cool on a rack for 20 minutes prior to eating. Sift powdered sugar and cinnamon on the top and if you really want a treat, drizzle caramel sauce over the top.
Enjoy!
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Simple Apple Cake
- Total Time: 45 mins
- Yield: 8 1x
Description
Enjoy this super simple and moist rustic apple cake that will be a hit for any gathering.
Ingredients
- 1 stick of sweet cream butter
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup of flour
- 1 teaspoon of cardamom
- 1 medium honey-crisp apple
- sugar and cinnamon to coat apple slices
- sifted confectioner sugar and cinnamon for topping (optional)
- caramel sauce(optional)
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
- Cut apples into slices and place into medium mixing bowl
- Add enough sugar and cinnamon to the mixing bowl until apples are well coated – set aside
- Add butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla to mixing bowl and with an electric beater, mix well
- In a small bowl mix flour and cardamom and sift into mixing bowl with batter in batches
- Pour batter into greased tart pan with parchment paper on top
- arrange apples on top
- Brush egg wash on top
- Bake for 35 minutes
- Pull out of oven and onto drying rack for 20 minutes
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 35 mins
- Category: Dessert
- Cuisine: Swedish
This apple cake is INCREDIBLE!! It was super moist, with excellent flavor and consistency. I loved every bite of it!! My mouth is watering even thinking of it now! ?