French Apple Cake

I love finding recipes like this French apple cake.  It has the key aspects I want in a recipe: something that is easy and quick but still delicious and fancy or elegant, a step above ordinary.  This cake is a breeze to make and it has a great flavor and it is different from what we in America think of as cake.  It is light and fresh.

When I made the Apple and Oat Betty I looked at which apples are best for baking with. I knew that for pies you want something that will not lose too much of their shape but something I hadn't thought of was to mix different types of apples to have a more complex flavor. It makes total sense though, so that is what I did for this. I used four different types, a Granny Smith, a Fuji, a Honeycrisp and a Macintosh. Not everyone has access to the same variety, I do live in the state that leads the US in apple production, but hopefully you can find some different apples to experiment with.

When I had finished cutting up all the apples and then made the batter I thought there were way to many apples.  The batter is only 2 eggs and less than a cup of flour and I had almost four cups of apples.  I was picturing the cake turning to mush and falling apart from too many apples.  But since I found this recipe on David Lebovitz's blog and I loved his "A Sweet Life In Paris" I put my faith in the recipe and it was perfect.  The recipe is actually from Dorie Greenspan and I already had her cookbook "Baking: From My Home to Yours" in my Amazon wish list so now I'm even more excited about that.

The rum adds a lot of flavor to this dish, so don't skip it.  You can taste it in the finished cake but it isn't overpowering.  If you really don't want to use it, triple the vanilla.  I don't drink much rum, but I'm pretty sure now that I have this recipe I'll be going through it much more rapidly, because I see this recipe becoming one of my stables.  It is so easy to whip up and so delicious, it's going to be hard for me to not cook it every other night.

French Apple Cake

3/4 cup flour
3/4 tso baking powder
pinch of salt
4 large apples (a mix of varieties)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsps dark rum
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
8 tbsps butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1. Peel and core the apples, then dice them into 1-inch pieces.
2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy then whisk in the sugar, then rum and vanilla.
3. Whisk in the flour, salt and melted butter.
4. Fold in the apple cubes until they're well-coated with the batter.
5. Scrape batter into a heavily buttered 8- or 9-inch springform pan placed on a baking sheet.
6. Bake in a 350ºF oven for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Let cake cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edge to loosen the cake from the pan and carefully remove the sides of the cake pan, making sure no apples are stuck to it.

From David Lebovitz

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