APPLE PUDDING CAKE
(adapted from the Prune Pudding Cake recipe)
18 feb 2006

my sister's second grade class did a project on apples &, in the process, compiled a cute handmade apple recipe book featuring one recipe per student. my mom made an apple cake recipe from that book fairly frequently while i was in middle school, & it was damn good.

this is not that recipe.

i'm not really sure why i didn't go with a tried & true. after all, i've never made that apple cake before so technically it'd be appropriate for OMGSNAX!, but somehow, when push came to shove, ok, well (a) i was planning to make these sweet potato gnocchi tonight that just so totally didn't happen but which i'm pretty sure i'll do tuesday after my stats class, (b) actually, i was INITIALLY going to make asparagus potato puffs, but then my sister wouldn't get me the potatoes when i didn't have enough, & the aspargus was all fat & woody looking, & then i left them in the car all day when we had our warm spell last week & they got wilty & yucky, & (c) i'm lazy, & even though i've called my mom three times in the last four hours, i didn't want to ask her for the recipe. i don't know, don't ask.

so i got this recipe out of a vegetarian cookbook i've had forever that i've been looking through a lot lately (hello, future attempt #3 at red bell pepper soup!) & it seemed pretty easy & daniel likes apple cake, so, you know, i'll make him try the gnocchi another night, right?

INGREDIENTS
2 cups dried apples
1 cup freshly pressed apple juice
1/4 cup unsweetened, unseasoned homemade apple butter, or store-bought
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour or kamut flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

METHOD
heat the oven to 350 F.

place the apples, apple juice, apple butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, & cloves in a large saucepan. bring the mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat. lower the heat to medium & continue simmering, stirring often, until the apples soften & the mixture thickens slightly, about 5 minutes.

meanwhile, place the flour & baking soda in a large mixing bowl & combine with a whisk. pour the apple mixture into the bowl, & stir quickly & thoroughly. (the mixture will foam as the baking soda reacts with the fruit juice.) pour the batter into a nonstick or lightly greased 7- to 8-inch round baking dish. bake until the cake is firm, & a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.

DEVIATIONS & OBSERVATIONS
ok, freshly pressed apple juice? homemade apple butter? i'm so sure.

yeah, i'm not even gonna address that.

but to add insult to injury, of course i screwed up & went to the wrong grocery store. dierbergs (or whole foods or wild oats) would've had some of this "unsweetened, unseasoned" apple butter, but schnucks? oh no. so i got stupid musselman's apple butter that's both sweetened & seasoned with cinnamon & i figured, ok, it's a quarter-cup, it'll probably be ok. i thought about cutting back on the cinnamon in the recipe but decided against it.

also, ok, i just thought i'd admit up front that i just don't have any kind of circular baking dish. but i did the math & i'm pretty sure a 9" x 5" loaf pan is about the same. ish. so, you know.

that said, dried apples? very sticky. i'd imagined dried apples as more of an apple chips type thing, but the kind i got were superduper sticky. which makes sense, i guess -- i mean, apricots are sticky, prunes are sticky, raisins (ew ew ew perish the thought!) are sticky. but still. kinda messy.

everything else post-chopping went pretty much according to plan, although i have to say that the "foam" that the recipe talked about was kind of a let-down. i guess i expected something along the lines of a bath bomb or chemistry experiment, but what i got was a low-level fizz that, although daniel took a photo of it, i can't show you b/c it was all blurry.

does it taste good? yes. is it as good as the cake my mom always makes? no. but it's pretty close. & that's not bad.

"Apple Pudding Cake" from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook by Diana Shaw, © 1997.