Russian Season

Looking through Grandmother’s recipe notebook that I borrowed from her (although it looks more like I’ve expropriated it, muahaha), I stumbled across a recipe titled “Quick Apple Cake”.  Naturally, the word “quick” caught my eye. My first attempt at this was a fail though, because I used a baking form that was too deep so there was too much batter and too little apples. Last night I made the cake again and it was a lot better!

This is the classic combination of fragrant fall apples flavoured with cinnamon and nutmeg on top of a dense, moist sweet-scented cake. Something very basic and homely, perfect with a scoop of good sour cream or Crème fraiche. Not to mention that the smell of a baking apple cake is one of the coziest food smells in the world!! I’m now thinking of trying this as an upside-down cake - to lock all of the rich apple juices inside.

Ingredients

1 cup + 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sour cream
3 large eggs
3 medium-sized tart apples, peeled, cored, and cut into slices
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 ground nutmeg
1 tsp butter
2/3 tbsp semolina

Makes a 30×24 cm cake

Whisk together 1 cup sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, and eggs. Add sour cream and baking soda, slightly beat with a fork. Fold in flour and stir until smooth.

Grease the baking form with butter and sprinkle with semolina. Pour batter into baking form and arrange slices of apples on top. Sprinkle apples with 1 1/2 tbsp sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Bake at 180-190C until a wooden stick comes out clean.

Serve warm with sour cream or creme fraiche.