“FRENCH” APPLE CAKE

I am on a mission to find the perfect apple cake.  I have no idea why this mission has happened to me but I seem to be drawn to apple cake recipes lately and have tried a few – but have yet to find the perfect one.

This recipe was nice but definitely not “the one” for me.  It comes from a truly delightful blog called “Life’s a Feast” and sounded as though it should be absolutely wonderful.  It almost was but, for me, it needed some spice.

I followed the recipe exactly and the cake looked fabulous.  It had a dense and moist dessert cake texture and the apples were beautifully distributed through the cake.  It was almost, but not quite, perfect for my quest.

We had it for lunch with guests one Sunday and it tasted lovely and kept well for a day or two, until it was all gone.

Some apple cake recipes are heavily spiced and I was attracted to the idea that this one was all about the apples and not the spice, but I felt that it was ever so slightly too bland.

I realise of course that there are apples and then there are apples.  According to one website I was reading, these days apples are grown and the varieties tinkered with to produce apples of perfect, blemish free shape that keep well.  In other words, they keep for a long time and look good in the fruit bowl but don’t have much flavour.  Maybe that’s the mistake I made here.

I can’t quite remember what variety of apples I used for this cake but as I was in France it most certainly would not have been cooking apples.  More likely a mixture of fruit bowl apples of various types depending on what I had bought or been given, and what needed using up.

I would make this cake again, for its lovely texture and appearance, if I could be sure of having some really appley flavoured apples to hand.  I might also cheat and add a tiny smidgen of spice.

You can see the original recipe here.