We have 2 large old apple trees in our garden, plus 3 not-quite-as-old apple trees. So when apple harvest season arrives, we have apple cake several times a week.
And don't worry, our friends the deer have plenty to eat...
Here's the recipe for this delicious apple-almond cake
Ingredients:
For a rectangular baking pan:
● 6 medium-sized apples
● 2 eggs
● 120 g sugar
● 1 packet vanilla sugar
● a splash of vanilla extract
● 100 g salted butter, room temperature
● 150 g wheat flour
● 40 g almond flour
● 2 tsp baking powder
● 100 ml milk
● 1 handful chopped almonds or almond slivers
● a bit of butter and flour for the pan, or of course parchment paper
● Powdered sugar for dusting
● optional a splash of lemon juice for the apples
Preparation:
1. Prepare the baking pan Grease a rectangular baking pan lightly with butter and dust with a little flour. Preheat the oven to 180°C convection.
2. Prepare the apples Peel the apples, quarter them, remove the cores, and cut into pieces or thin slices. If you'd like, you can drizzle a bit of lemon juice over the apples so they don't turn brown. But it's not necessary.
3. Whip the egg mixture Beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla sugar with a hand mixer for a few minutes until light and fluffy.
4. Add butter and vanilla Add the room-temperature salted butter together with the vanilla extract to the egg-sugar mixture and mix in well.
5. Add milk
6. Prepare the dry ingredients Mix the wheat flour, almond flour, and baking powder together. Now stop using the mixer and gently fold everything in with a spatula or wooden spoon until you have an even batter. This keeps as much air in the dough as possible and makes the cake nice and light.
7. Fold in the apples Carefully fold the prepared apples into the batter as well.
8. Bake Pour the batter into the prepared rectangular pan and smooth the top. Distribute a handful of almond slivers evenly over the top. Bake at 180°C convection for about 45 minutes until the cake is golden brown. Toward the end, check with a wooden skewer to see if it's baked through. If the top is getting too dark, you can loosely cover it.
9. Finish Let the cake cool completely, then dust generously with powdered sugar. Thanks to the almond flour and plenty of apples, the cake stays wonderfully moist, while gently folding in the flour mixture ensures the batter doesn't become unnecessarily dense.
