Apple Orchard Experiments: Take 2 – Apple Walnut Cake

Winding down the stash of apples now, this weekend I still had a handful left for baking and a handful left for eating. (There are a few apple recipes still to come from the past couple weekends.) The next apple baking adventure had me stumbling across a recipe for an “Apple Ginger Snack Cake.” It sounded awesome, so I went for it. I was not disappointed.

My version was a little bit less like cake and little less like Apple Ginger than it was Apple Walnut. This was because Christiane, who blogged about this recipe in her blog, “Taking on Magazines,” made a lovely sounding cream cheese frosting to spread on top of her cake and also scattered it with crystallized ginger. Although this sounded tasty, I actually preferred the cake all on its own, without the frosting or the ginger topping.

The flavor was terrific and with 1 ½ cups of sugar (you could even go less if you wanted) for the entire 9x13 pan, it seems reasonably healthy… a yummy cross between bread and cake, sweet from the apples, super-moist, with the little bits of walnut. And yes, I may have had a piece for breakfast with coffee.

Note: Christiane said that her cake took 45-50 minutes, but mine took less than that, so simply keep an eye on yours to see how long it takes in your oven.

Apple Walnut Cake

(Adapted from Taking on Magazines: “Apple-Ginger Snack Cake from All You Magazine’s Back to School Issue 2012”)

1 cup chopped walnuts

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp salt

1 stick (8 Tbsp) unsalted butter, melted

1 ½ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

4 large (or 6 small) Yellow Delicious apples, peeled, cored, and chopped fairly small

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Scatter walnuts on a 9x13 baking pan and toast in the pre-heating oven until lightly toasted, keeping an eye on the nuts to ensure they don’t burn, 7-10 minutes. Take the pan out of the oven and let the nuts cool.

While the walnuts are cooling, in one bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. In another, large bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until blended. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and stir until well incorporated. The batter will be extremely thick. Fold in the apples and the walnuts.

Take your 9x13 baking pan, spritz with cooking spray, and spread the batter evenly in the pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 35-45 minutes.