Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I must be the Pintester. Because, you see, I’ve actually already tried two different versions of this easy fresh apple cake.
Image from a. liz adventures
Yep, I tried it once in the form of a 2-ingredient apple pie cake. That one tasted pretty good, actually, but involved canned apple pie filling instead of fresh apples. And I also tried it in the form of a cobbler with berries and soda instead of apples and butter, but the idea is very similar. That one didn’t turn out so well– I ended up with a lot of dry powdery parts. (In the cake guys, don’t be weird. My parts are all properly moist and un-powdery, thank you.)
Still, I reasoned that this time things would be better. So I assembled my ingredients.
For this one, I decided to use my handy-dandy apple corer/slicer thingie since there was no need to peel the apples. I reasoned it would save me mucho time. But, really, I think I need corer/slicer lessons, because they turned out like this:
And then I had to pick the damn seeds out by hand anyway so I don’t think it saved me much actual time in the long run. I did manage not to cut any of my digits off, which is kind of a miracle, considering the amount of pressure I had to apply to the thing and the number of swear words flying out of my mouth.
The instructions said to use 2 apples, but when I put my 2 apples in my pan, it looked like this:
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable at all to think that that is not nearly enough apples, especially when the picture in the original post looks like this:
She claims that’s 2 apples, but if it is, her pan is much, muuuuuuch smaller than mine. My pan was cavernous and required more to fill it up. (Hurr hurr.) So I added more.
Even still, this looked sparse to me, but I didn’t want to mess up the recipe too much, so I left it like this and added the cake mix.
Now, recalling my earlier problem with my berry cobbler wherein the cake mix that was not wet stayed not-wet, I was worried that the butter would not be enough, despite the fact that it’s a whole fuckin’ stick of the stuff.
So I briefly considered mixing it all up and/or adding water or something. But the recipe post says:
Usually, I’ve found that the butter and the moisture from the fruit is enough to soak into the dry mix and create a nice cooked crust. If, however, when cooking, you find that some of your cake mix still looks powdery, you can try sprinkling a few tablespoons of water over those areas to ensure thorough cooking.
And, dummy me, I trusted the internets and my own questionable baking skills and figured that since I put extra apples in, I should totally be golden on that whole moisture thing.
Well. I was wrong.
I did try the water sprinkling thing, but it didn’t help. Also, I think the whole thing should have cooked longer and that might have helped, but there were already starting to be burny spots on the top, and I have low tolerance for burny spots, so I took it out of the oven.
Sigh. It tasted about like you’d expect a not-quite cooked apple cake with powdery bits to taste. Was it easy? Uh, yeah. But it seems to me the point is that it should also be, you know, edible. And, at least if you bake like I do, that did not turn out to be the case.
I didn’t even bother putting ice cream on that shit. Would have been a waste of perfectly good ice cream. I did eat a couple helpings of it before I decided the powdery mess, less-than-optimally cooked apples, and random apple seeds I missed made it truly inedible and scraped the rest into the trash.
How bout them apples?
20 Comments
i see the ‘fool me how many times’ warning and yet i still want to try it. what is wrong with me??
the original picture looks like her slices are SUPER thin, which would be why 2 apples looks like it fills more of the pan because there would be more slices. Also, I would think thinner slices would cook differently which might by what happened? not like i have a fucking clue… i just stick with store bought cakes removed from packaging and placed on a pretty try so it LOOKS homemade.
Meh, I don’t like mixes. It’s assembly work, not cooking. Plus, I think she’s using a square pan, and not the whole box of cake mix. I make up something like this: http://www.chow.com/recipes/11416-apple-crisp-with-oatmeal-streusel
I see lots of fruit crisp/cake recipes that say to just poor melted butter over the cake mix, and they always fail. If you take a few extra minutes and cut solid butter into the cake mix (like you would do with biscuits) You get a nice even top instead of powdery clumpy crap.
I’ve done this, but I melt the butter and mix it with the cake mix first. It makes a nice crumb topping for the apples. And her pan is square, definitely smaller than your larger one.
I really have always been partial to the powdery parts when my mom made dumpcake (which is cherry pie filling, pineapple, yellow cake mix, butter, pecans). I would fight my sister to get them. Yup, other people like cake, I am happy eating the dry mix.
My mind is still stuck on powdery bits and canvernous
Didn’t make it to powdery bits, I’m still at cavernous.
Her apple slices are very thin, and her pan does look smaller. When I make this type of cake, I usually slice my butter into thin slices, and lay them out over the cake mix. The last time I made one, it had a largeish bit off on one side where there was no butter and it was just pure powder, so I sliced some extra butter, laid it over that bit, and popped it back in the oven for a few minutes. It was fantastic. As long as you have enough gooey buttery bits, the dry powdery bits all mix together with the whipped cream or ice cream to make a delicious taste explosion.
Pfft, how hard can it be: slice and peel apples, cover in sugar and cinnamon (the advanced version calls for lemon juice and ginger as well but who the heck has that anyway.). Mix together random amounts of oatmeal, wheat flour, sugar and butter. Cover apples with mixture.
Bake in the oven at around 180-200C until golden (Is it just me or do all recipes say cook until golden yet when you do it yourself its either burnt to a crisp or undercooked?)
Can also be made with random canned/frozen fruit.
If you are even lazier theres an easier version with less ingredients:
Peel/slice apple, cover with cinnamon and sugar, pour wheat flour over and slice butter on top using a cheese grater. Bake until done, can also be done in a microwave oven with horrible results.
I have made a similar cake with cherry pie filling and here is what I found. One stick of butter isn’t nearly enough. And really, if you are going to use one stick, why not two. Ok, that sounded a lot dirtier than intended. But take your two sticks of butter and cut them into thin slices and cover the entire pan with butter. There can be little lines of cake mix, but not much. Then bake and enjoy. It is actually really good.
You wouldn’t have powdery bits if you gave thanks to Astroglide.
sorry, i had to stop reading after you used the word “moist”… *gag*
hope your cake turned out okay.
Okay – I’m just saying, you MUST have Catherine’s comment in the roundup. Seriously. Give thanks to Astroglide!
Okay this a recipe my boyfriend can make.
Fruit of any sort to fill glass pan 1/3 of the way (he uses diced apples or blackberries)
about half a cup of water (more or less depending on the amount of fruit/pan size)
then you use your hands and cut cold butter into flower and crumble it (think small granules, not powdery but not massively lumpy)
then add sugar to taste you should have enough to generously cover the top of your fruit. bake at 350 until the top is golden (or in his case slightly yellow)
It’s delicious, fat filled, but delicious. A man who royally fucks up 3 ingredient cookies can make this, so hopefully this will help someone else in need of easy (and nearly fail proof) desserts.
My BFF and I made the berry/diet soda version. Except, she “misread the recipe” and used the rest of the 2 liter of nasty diet lemon-lime, instead of a cans worth. The soda being nasty had nothing to do with it, supposedly she thought a can couldn’t possibly be correct. We deemed the result to be “boiled diet lemon lime soda with weird chunks of freezer-burned fruit and powder chunks” and nowhere near “cake”.
We ate most of it anyways because it was sweet, but every time we took a bite, we would end up making a pained face, cracking up, and having some water (psh, lets be honest, WINE!)
Yes, we managed to fuck it up more than you, Sonja.
Totally cracked up remembering this. Sometimes the worst freaking things are the best freaking times!
Nice face 😉
I make this recipe all the time but with canned peaches! Juice included and it comes out amazeballs! Seriously try it again but with canned peaches.