This cake is simple to prepare and really more apples than cake. The batter whisked together easily using melted butter, sugar, egg, a little flour, salt & baking powder that stretched to coat each apple piece. In her recipe, Dorie suggested using a variety of apples. Luckily, my last trip to the farmer's market resulted in a bounty of apples: Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious, Jonagold, and Ida Red. It has been a spectacular year for apples in Ohio! The mix of tart and sweet apples plus dark rum and vanilla resulted in a delicate, simple flavor. The apples really are the stars. Dorie's recipe can be found at epicurious.com.
The recipe called for using an eight-inch springform pan, exactly what I found myself without. Instead of spreading out the batter in a nine-inch springform pan, I buttered & lined seven ramekins (3 ½ -inch) with parchment paper. The cakes were golden brown and pulled away from the edges of the ramekins after 35 minutes versus the 50 to 60 minutes in the original recipe. I let the cakes rest a few minutes before attempting what I hoped would not be a disaster. I was prepared to enjoy the cakes in the ramekins, which would have been just as delicious, but they popped right out and even maintained their shape and golden crust goodness on top.
The individual cakes were perfect warm from the oven and were over the top with a scoop of salty caramel ice cream from our neighborhood ice cream shop: Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. The burnt sugar flavor of the ice cream paired perfectly with the simple apple cake. Delicious!
Google translate so would have made my high school French class life much easier! Ahhh, technology.
This week we go English to French. Listen to the translation:
November promises to be a fantastic journey through more of Dorie Greenspan's recipes. Stay tuned!
I'm definitely going to make these in individual pans next time. Yours look scrumptious!
ReplyDeleteThat burnt sugar ice cream sounds like a super delicious accompaniament for the cake. Love your cute little individual cakes!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea using ramekins! and I am glad they came out so great! I will try that next time as well.
ReplyDeleteI liked listening to Google's translation. A French less with cooking!!! I totally agree - I had French for 1 year in high school - things would be so much easier now!!
I did one cake in a springform pan and then made the recipe again using my good old muffin tins. Ramekins are much more elegant, though.
ReplyDeleteI love that you made individual cakes in ramekins- they're so cute! I bet they were really good with that yummy ice cream. :)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely worked out quite well using the ramekins. I filled them generously & could have easily spread the batter between 8 ramekins. Keeper of a recipe!
ReplyDeleteI made it twice too ;-)
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