immersive apple experience: apple-turducken...

[full disclosure: i wrote this roughly two three weeks ago... then we had a week-long plumbing emergency that left me swallowing painkillers in rapid succession to keep my head from exploding. trust me when i say that there are few things in life as joyous as a migraine that lasts multiple days. good times. said crisis was eventually rectified, and i have (almost) finished recovering from the stress of the thing, so this seems like the perfect time to wrap up my talk about our seasonal obsession with apples. oh, and further full disclosure: the lighting in my kitchen is extra-sucky once we run out of daylight, which happens shortly after four in the afternoon at this time of year. if anyone ever suggests that you move to Canada... start running away!]

in our last episode, i turned most of the assortment of apples into a tasty crumble, but the best bit was still to come. what could possibly be tastier than a toasty apple crumble, you ask? apple crumble cake, i respond.

everything is better with cake.

this dessert is the best of both worlds, and it offers a fantastic voyage of appley (appleish?) goodness for all. as the name implies, it is the fusion of a cake (which everybody loves) and a crumble (which is basically a crustless pie... which everybody also loves). basically, this is the apple-turducken the world has been waiting for.

as the name also implies, the setup for this one involved a few more steps than when i made the crumble (see previous post). i reserved half an apple from each variety (plus half a pear) for this one...

and i am using this recipe (with a few tweaks, see below) as my starting point.

the fruit was cut into slightly-smaller pieces this time around, and the remaining ingredients were assembled. [random aside: this is—just possibly—the part of cooking/baking i like best. it is meditative to chop, measure, and arrange all of the necessary bits in preparation for making something wonderful. my brand of OCD delights in this part of things.]

there are multiple parts to this recipe, so i sorted the ingredients accordingly.

1. yogurt (because i had no sour cream on hand)
2. dry ingredients for cake base 
3. fruit with sugar, ginger, lemon juice, and cornstarch
4. butter, sugar, and ginger for cake base
5. dry ingredients for crumble topping

i made the following tweaks:

• added salt to #2 & #5, and a pinch to the fruit in #3
• added a bit of cornstarch to fruit in #3
• added grated fresh ginger and lemon zest to #3 & #4
• added (dry) ground ginger & freshly-grated nutmeg to #2 &#5
• added chopped walnuts to #2 & #5
• sprinkled a handful of dried cranberries over the fruit topping during cake assembly
• used less sugar in each component, because we prefer desserty things slightly-less sweet
• skipped the caramel and icing sugar at the end, for the same reason

each component of this cake needs to be prepped separately before being layered in the baking pan. i first combined the contents of the fruit bowl, then i did the same for the crumble topping.

next, the contents of the butter bowl got creamed together to start the cake batter.

this is when i remembered the eggs which had been left sitting elsewhere on the counter to come to room temperature.

they went into the butter mixture.

this is very simple cake mixture, so fancy mixing equipment is not necessary. a rubber spatula was
my only tool.

the recipe specifies to add the dry cake ingredients in thirds, alternated with the sour cream (yogurt), mixing after each addition. so, first came some flour mixture...

then half the yogurt...

and i continued on in that fashion, ending with the last third of the flour mixture. the batter should be a relatively thick one, as it has to be able to support the fruit and the crumble topping.

with the fruit, batter, and topping mixtures ready to go, finally, i began to assemble the cake.

into a greased springform pan...

went the cake batter, spreading to distribute evenly...

and it was topped with the fruit mixture.

i sprinkled over a handful of cranberries, because i can.

and the whole thing was covered with the crumble mixture.

just in time too, as the crumble from the previous post was ready to come out of the oven at this point.

after a short stay in the oven, the cake was ready to go. imagine my dismay as i stood there in the kitchen trying to decide which appley treat we should try first.

i love a good crumble, but cake always wins!!!

the best bits were along the outer edges where the fruit caramelized a bit. it was a thing of pure joy.

the whole cake disappeared in two days. luckily, it was covered in fruit, so it was practically a health food. makes perfect sense, no?

the end.