This post also coincides with National Apple Dumpling Day, which is September 17.
I’m also participating in Apple Week with a dozen other bloggers this week. We’re all posting at least one new apple recipe this week on our blogs and this is my contribution for the week.
The cake also does double duty for my Banana Bread Fest series, my fourth banana bread recipe. Technically though, it’s not really banana bread. It’s definitely more cake-like than bread-like, lighter and with a more delicate crumb and an airier texture than banana bread. However, the banana, in addition to the yogurt incorporated into the cake batter, really helps to keep it moist, soft, and tender.
The cake’s favor leans much more toward apple than banana, and the spices I used including cinnamon, ginger, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, and cloves accentuate and complement the flavor of the apples. If you don’t keep all of those spices on hand, don’t worry about it and use what you do have.
I mixed up the batter by hand with a whisk, in one big bowl, by melting some butter, adding a little oil, sugar, eggs, yogurt, spices and whisking. After folding in some diced apples, mashed banana, and flour, the batter was ready in no time. The selling point of this cake is not how easy it is to make or how the bits of apples in each bite are like little fruit surprises with a great chewy texture. The selling point is the glaze. I have made hundreds and hundreds of batches of glaze and frosting in my life and this vanilla caramel glaze is my number one favorite frosting or glaze, ever. It even surpasses chocolate-peanut butter buttercream and it’s hard to compete with chocolate + peanut butter + butter, but this glaze is my kryptonite.
If you like caramels, you’ll love it. It’s buttery, caramely, rich, smooth, decadent, sweet, and full of robust vanilla flavor. At room temperature, it stays soft and although it will set up and crystallize a tiny bit over time, it stays satiny and smooth. Imagine biting into the creamiest, richest, most intense caramel that’s ever passed your lips, then infusing it with cream, sugar and vanilla, and then glazing a cake with it. That’s what we have here and it makes store-bought jarred caramel sauce look like a pathetic excuse of a brown runny syrup that you’ll never be able to look at in quite the same way.
This recipe makes a generous-sized Bundt cake and since we didn’t need an entire cake just laying around, I sent half the cake with Scott, who was going back to his office after dinner to get some work done. He put out the cake at 9pm and apparently others in the building who were also working late had a case of the midnight munchies because he said that when went back into the breakroom a little after midnight, the entire cake was gone. I guess they liked it.
Related Recipes
Caramel Apple Bars (GF with vegan adaptation) – Caramely and gooey and the chunky apples pieces and oats give a great chewiness Tried this recipe? Leave a review! Consider leaving a 5 star rating if you’ve made and loved one of my recipes!
Spiced Apple Pie Smoothie (vegan, GF)
Banana Bread with Vanilla Browned Butter Glaze – Week 1 of Banana Bread Fest
Zucchini Banana Bread with Browned Butter Cream Cheese Frosting – Week 2 of Banana Bread Fest
Pumpkin Banana Bread with Browned Butter Cream Cheese Frosting – Week 3 of Banana Bread Fest
Do you have any favorite apple recipes? Feel free to link up your favorite apple recipes Check out these ladies’ blogs this week for their apple recipes Thanks for the Cooking With Trader Joe’s Cookbook Giveaway entries and have a great week!
