A new Dorie Greenspan cookbook is always a cause for celebration. Her latest, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes, is just the kind of book her loyal fans want from her: a cookbook full of expert advice that’s also cozy and comforting . Reading her headnotes is like having your favorite teacher show up at your house with a wooden spoon and a bagful of ingredients eager to teach you how to make an apple pie.
Or, in this case, an apple bundt cake. That’s the first recipe I gravitated to in this generous book, one that’s so chock-full of casual cake recipes, you could spend a lifetime trying to figure out what to make first. Following my gut, I assembled the ingredients: two large apples which I happened to pick myself this past weekend.
Batter Up
The batter is so simple, it basically makes itself. In a stand mixer you beat together eggs and brown sugar (no butter in this cake, the only fat is oil) before drizzling in maple syrup.
Once you complete the batter — with flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, sea salt, and buttermilk (I actually used full-fat yogurt) — you add your apples.
Apples to Apples
Then it’s just a matter of folding those apples in and pouring the batter into your well-prepped Bundt pan.
I may have been a little over-zealous in prepping my Bundt: I sprayed it all over with baking spray, coated in flour, but then I saw that the middle section wasn’t really coated and there’s nothing worse than having a Bundt cake stick, so I sprayed it again and re-coated with flour. It came out of the oven looking beautiful.
It also smelled wonderful.
And though it came effortlessly out of the pan (phew!), there was a bit of floury/oily stuff on the outside because of my overzealousness.
Not to worry: it’s nothing a little powdered sugar can’t fix! Or, in the case of this smarter-than-smart recipe, a caramel topping made quickly with butter, cream, brown sugar, and vanilla.
You just boil that for two minutes and then pour it all over the cake.
The combination of the caramel sauce with the apple-studded cake is pure heaven. Each bite is like a little hug from Dorie.
So get out your Bundt pan, spray it well (but not too well), and treat yourself to what Dorie calls “the quintessential flavors of the season.” You can nibble on it while poring over the rest of Dorie’s magnificent new book.
Apple Bundt Cake
Ingredients
Method
- Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F. Choose a 10-cup Bundt pan, preferably one that doesn’t have a complicated design; coat it with baker’s spray or butter it, dust the interior with flour and tap out the excess.
- To prep the apples: Cut the apples into small chunks. Try to keep them less than 1/2 inch, but don’t fuss over neatness here; even a rough chop will work. You should have between 3 1/2 and 4 cups of chunks (but again, precision’s not necessary). Put the apples, sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a large bowl and toss together to coat the apples; set aside.
- To make the cake: Whisk the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt together.
- Working in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the brown sugar and eggs together on medium speed for about 3 minutes. Still working on medium, and scraping the bowl and beater(s) as needed, blend in the maple syrup, followed by the oil and then the vanilla. Turn off the mixer, add half of the flour mixture and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are almost incorporated. Pour in the buttermilk and mix just until incorporated, then add the remainder of the dry ingredients and mix just until they disappear into the thin batter.
- Give the apples a quick stir, scrape them into the batter — include any syrup that has accumulated — and mix them in with a flexible spatula. Pour the batter into the pan.
- Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until the cake just starts to pull away from the sides of the pan and, more important, a tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. The batter may have baked a bit higher than the center opening, but that’s fine. Transfer the cake to a rack and let it sit for 10 minutes, then un-mold it onto the rack and allow it to cool to room temperature.
- To make the caramel: Put the butter, brown sugar, milk (or half-and-half or cream) and vanilla in a medium saucepan set over medium heat. Bring to a boil and keep at a bubble, stirring, for 2 minutes. Use the caramel immediately as a glaze for the cake (put the cake on a rack set over a baking sheet or a piece of parchment paper and pour over the caramel) or as a sauce over slices of cake, or over ice cream, if you’re serving it.
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