Betty's at it again! Make room for a little bit of apple goodness!!

I just can't get in enough of it - I must be going through a baking craze and I love it! I found this apple cake recipe on Diana's Desserts and after reading reviews I was ready to give this a try! This cake was delicious! I love the smell of cinnamon and apples! What a comfort :)

So I know in my earlier blogs I used to have all these funny disaster stories to share. It's been a while, but I finally have one for you! Not a huge disaster, but enough to make you laugh :) For those of you who read my baking recipes, you will know that I LOVE to top the batter of my baked goods with raw sugar before popping them in the oven. This gives the top of the cake/bread/muffins a crunchy texture that is so delicious!

Anyway, I'm using a bundt pan for this recipe, and before I'm about to pop the batter into the oven I decide to sprinkle the top of it with raw sugar! Here I am thinking this is the best idea ever! However, the oven and the sugar thought differently... Because there was so much batter in the bundt pan, the recipe called for a longer baking time - an hour and a half (see below). After about an hour of baking I went to go check on my cake and realized the raw sugar on top was starting to burn. Oh no! And the cake was nowhere near done at this point though! So I decided to take some tinfoil and cover parts of the cake that were started to burn, using as little tinfoil as possible, as I still needed to allow the cake to bake and rise properly. Well at the hour and a half mark, the top of the cake was completely burnt - crap... I let the cake cool and began brainstorming what I was going to do. When I went to remove the cake from the pan, I realized only the top of the cake was burnt from where I had sprinkled the raw sugar - the rest of the cake was baked perfectly and smelled delicious. The last thing I wanted to do was throw away all my hard work. SO I DID IT... I sliced the entire top layer off the cake, threw it out, and WAH-LA - a perfectly good cake! But as most of you know, when you use a bundt pan, the top of the cake (when baking) ends up being the bottom of the cake - so no one would ever know I had to slice a layer off! This wasn't a total disaster - and I learned something from this - the longer the baking time, the more you will upset the raw sugar! And we don't want to do that! Haha!

Enjoy this recipe! I recommend everyone tries this! It's a great substitute for apple pie too! But please, omit sprinkling the top of the batter with raw sugar - you don't want to make those little crystals of yumminess mad ;)

Chilly Day Apple Cake (click on title to view original recipe)

Ingredients 

• 4 medium size Golden Delicious apples (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled, cored and chopped
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped
• 5 tablespoons Demerara sugar (raw sugar cane crystals)
• 1-2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• juice of 1 orange
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Confectioners' sugar, for dusting cake  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a bundt pan.
2. Mix the apples, walnuts, Demerara sugar and ground cinnamon in a large bowl.
3. In another bowl, combine the 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, orange juice, orange peel and vanilla extract; whisk to blend.
4. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together; add to egg mixture.
5. Spoon 1 1/2 cups batter into the prepared bundt pan. Top with half of the apple mixture. Cover with 1 1/2 cups batter. Top with remaining apples, then with remaining batter.
6. Bake cake in preheated oven until top is golden brown and tester inserted near center comes out with moist crumbs attached, about 1 hour 30 minutes.
7. Cool cake in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes. Run knife around sides of pan and center tube to loosen. Turn cake out onto rack. Cool for 1 hour.
8. Dust cake with confectioners' sugar.
9. Optional: Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Store any leftover cake covered at room temperature.
10. Yield: 8 to 10 servings.