I know that I admitted to having a cooked-fruit-with-crumb-topping addiction nearly two weeks ago – a near-eternity in the blogosphere – and an admission which you most likely have forgotten by now or of which you were never aware. So let me say it again. I have a problem. But now I think the problem is not just fruit crumble. No. Now I believe that the problem truly is that perfect duo of the harvest season, apple and cinnamon. Holy smokes, is that shiznit good together. I am trying to come to terms with this spiral downward into my apple dessert addiction – one has to wonder when and how I will hit rock bottom. Will it be at the hands of an apple pandowdy? Or maybe it’s less complex; a simple baked cinnamon apple will take me down and force me into Apple-Cinnamon Anonymous. In any event, this is the dessert (which also happens to double magnificently as a coffee cake, I must tell you) that forced me to face the depth of my problem. Oh, demon Cinnamon-Apple Cake, why must you do this to me?
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
- 6 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 3 cups sliced peeled apples (I used 3 large + one little wee one, which probably put me over the 3 cups called for here.)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease a 9-inch springform pan
- Combine flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl and mix well.
- Combine cinnamon and 1/4 cup sugar. Take 2 tablespoons of the cinnamon-sugar mixture and add it to the sliced, peeled apples, stirring to distribute cinnamon-sugar throughout. Reserve remaining cinnamon-sugar mixture.
- Mix sugar and butter in mixing bowl until well-blended. Add cream cheese and vanilla extract and blend on medium-low speed until well-combined. The mixture will resemble a grainy frosting. You're trying to introduce air into the batter so that it will be light and fluffy during this part of the process.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture and blend on low speed until well blended. Fold apples into batter.
- Pour batter into springform pan, sprinkling remaining cinnamon-sugar over the top of the cake. Bake for approximately 1 hour 10 minutes or until the cake begins to separate from the side of the pan.
- Cool completely on a rack. Because the cake is so moist, use a serrated knife to cut.
- Serve with the homemade vanilla ice cream posted yesterday, and just watch as you sink deeper and deeper into an apple-cinnamon addiction. I must warn you, this cake is not dense like your average coffee cake. It is light and ethereal and is, as JR said so eloquently, chock-a-block of appleness and cinnamony-ness. Oh, and on day three, the vanilla ice cream had only improved in flavor.
Dinner tonight: A-ha! OUT for dinner! Imagine? We’re going to my favorite restaurant, Trattoria della Nonna. One cannot live on frugality alone. Not on apple-cinnamon desserts alone, either, in fact. Shocking, I realize, but true.
p.s. This morning, I bought another two-dollar and fifty-cent bag of apples (5+ pounds!) from my neighbors, specifically for cooking, though I haven’t finished off the first bag I bought two weeks ago. She said they still have about 30 bushels left to pick. I should be sufficiently sated with even a small percentage of 30 bushels, right? Oh boy, I really do hope so.