My favorite apple cake
If guests are coming, if I'm going somewhere and need to bring dessert, if I just feel like baking, this is the cake I make in the fall. It comes from Julie Riven, with whom I wrote the Globe magazine food column for many years, and then a cookbook. Her mother made it.
What is special about this cake is its remarkably moist texture, from oil and orange juice. When you layer the batter with four apples (Julie and I both use Cortlands), you wonder if there's enough batter to hold the apples together. But there is. The cake tastes delicious, it's easy to put together, it keeps well, and it's high in the pan. Head to the kitchen.
Julie's mother's apple cake
Makes 1 large cake
Butter (for the pan)
Flour (for the pan)
1 cup canola oil
4 eggs
1/4 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 baking apples (Cortland, Baldwin, Mutsu, Northern Spy, Opalescent, Rhode Island Greening, Rome Beauty, Spigold), peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon mixed with 5 tablespoons granulated sugar
Confectioners' sugar (for sprinkling)
1. Set the oven at 350 degrees. Butter a 10-inch tube pan, line the bottom with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit it, and butter the paper. Dust the pan with flour, tapping out the excess.
2. In an electric mixer, combine the oil, eggs, orange juice, and vanilla. Beat until smooth.
3. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Beat just until smooth again, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
4. Spoon one-third of the batter into the pan (barely a layer). Smooth the batter with a metal palette knife. Gently press half the apples into the batter (OK to overlap). Sprinkle with half the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Add one-third more batter, the remaining apples, and all but 2 tablespoons of the remaining cinnamon-sugar. Cover with batter, smooth the top (it may not cover the apples; that's OK), and sprinkle with remaining cinnamon-sugar.
5. Bake the cake for 60 to 70 minutes or until the top is firm and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
6. With a small knife, cut around the inside and outside edges of the cake to release it from the pan. Turn the cake out onto a plate. Set another plate on top and invert again so the cake is right-side up. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar. Adapted from "The Way We Cook"
I cut this out of the Globe back in the 80's and lost it! I've been dying to make it again.
Thank you so much for tyhe reprint!
Thanks for posting this recipe and the annual round up on apples, I look forward to it every fall.
Sounds delicious. Does it have a print format? I can't find it. Thank you.
The last two Wednesdays recipes, Aunt Selma's Chocolate Cake and Apple Cake, I have not been able to print out page 2 of the recipe. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you.
I'd love to print this in print format.
Hello Michele and everyone who wants a print-out: We're working on this. Sorry it's taking so long. Sheryl Julian
Hey Boston Globe!
Just finished making this delicious cake and it is baking as I type this!
It smells absolutely heavenly and can't wait to have it with a cup of coffee!
Happy Autumn!
Could I use a Bundt pan for this?
Is there any chance Julie's mother kept a kosher home? Except for the orange juice measurement - 1/4 cup rather than 1/2 cup -- this is the same recipe for Joan Nathan's "Jewish Apple Cake" which she found in the recipe box of nearly all Jewish women she met with as she worked on one of her cookbooks. The moniker "Jewish" comes from the fact that rather than butter or milk to moisten this cake, the recipe calls for orange juice and oil. (She has you "butter" the pan with oil, then the flour, to keep things dairy-free.) Isn't it amazing how one recipe can travel long distances and unite so many seemingly disparate households?
This is very similar to a recipe that I use that either came from the Globe or the Patriot Ledger for a Philadelphia Apple Cake or something similar - basically like coffee cake with apples in it. Same use of a cup of oil and OJ added.
@Sarah B, that's a bundt pan recipe so I'm assuming this would be fine in one too (although I don't think parchment paper would fit well). The bundt pan works well, too, as it gives you little slicing guidelines. Just note that on a bundt pan you only need to flip it once, so to get cinnamon and sugar on the top you need to sprinkle the pan with it before any batter goes in.
I just printed out the recipe. I can't wait to make it. My husband loves apple pie. This one is going to blow his mind. It looks delicious and so moist. Thanks a bunch.
For those of you having printing problems, I always highlight and copy the text into a word processing program so I can save it to my recipe file and - more importantly - format it so it fits onto one page. You may have to cut any of the HTML stuff or side bars that copy over with it, but the end result is easier to work with. - RED
And for those of us who can't eat dairy, this is perfect!
Any recipe for makinng it gluten free?
I used my food processor's 3mm slicing disk to slice the apples and that worked out well because they were uniform. The cake slid right out of the pan for me. This is a big, dense, moist cake. I would say there are 10-12 servings.
Careful of the orange juice :-))
Can you substitute applesauce or yogurt for the oil? I do this for pumpkin bread and it turns out great, but has anyone tried it with this recipe? Thanks
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Sheryl Julian, the Globe's Food Editor, writes regularly for the Food section.Devra First is the Globe's food reporter and restaurant critic. Her reviews appear weekly in the Food section.
Stephen Meuse writes and blogs about wine. His column, By the Glass, appears on the last Wednesday of the month in the Food section. Plonkapalooza, his review of 50 bottles $12 and under, comes out every fall.
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