"There's a hole in this cake"

"What is it?"
"It's a bundt."
"A Bundt?"
"Bundt."
"Bunk?"
"Bundt."
"Buuun-t."
"Bundt, Bundt."
" Einai cake, mori."
"Ohhhh... It's a cake! I know! Thank you! Thank you very much!"

Last week my dad went on over to 95th Produce to pick up some bananas (he had eaten the ones I bought to make the banana bread, so he was required to get more if he wanted me to make it). While he was there, he picked up some nice tart green apples. I wasn't sure if he had a plan for them, like making his wonderfully fantastic apple pancake for us, or just to eat, so I let them be. Well, Saturday morning, he asked why I wasn't doing anything with them and I was like, "uh well, I didn't know they were for me." And then he said that he bought them for me to make something. I think he is getting a bit spoiled, no?

So I woke up Sunday morning, ridiculously early for being out late Saturday night, and decided I was going to make my apple bread. I love my apple bread. Mmmm..... that's some good stuff right there. So I go on a search for my apple bread recipe. And I cant find it!!! I tore apart my recipe/cookbook section of my room. Nowhere!!! I was getting really pissy when I realized that two of my co-workers have the recipe! Now if I only had their phone #'s...

Well, in the middle of looking for the recipe, I cam across some others I've been wanting to try and then this apple cake recipe. I figured that it would take too much effort (and I would have to wait for a more decent hour---it was 7am) to get the apple bread recipe right then, so I decided on the apple cake. I've never made it before and honestly, I'm not even sure where it came from. It was just one of the many recipes I copied and pasted to Word with a bunch of other apple recipes after my friend Anastasia and I went apple picking last fall.

So I started making the cake. It was really easy to make, but there is a heck of a lot of fat in it. It's got 4 large eggs, 1 1/2 cups of veg oil and 1 stick of melted butter. I had a feeling this was going to be one moist cake... I wasn't disappointed...

Recipe:

For the apples:
1 1/2 pounds Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
1 lemon, juiced
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

For the batter:
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup warm water
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix the apples with the lemon juice, sugar, and cinnamon in a mixking bowl and let stand while you make the batter.

Lightly whisk the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add the oil, melted butter, sugar, vanilla and water. Whisk until smooth. In a separate mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Use a whisk of the handle of a spoon to mix the dry ingredients together. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture and stir just until incorporated. DO NOT OVERMIX! (Seriously, the recipe had this in caps.)

Grease and lightly flour a Bundt pan (or you can use the cooking spray that has flour in it, it's sooooo much easier!). Pour 1/4 of the batter into the pan, then arrange 1/3 of the apples around the top of the batter. Make 2 more layers of apples, smoothing the batter over them after each addition. Top off with the last of the batter and smooth.

Bake about 1 hour and 10 minutes, until risen, the top is nicely browned, and a sharp knife inserted in the middle comes out with tiny little crumbs stuck to it, but not wet batter.

*****Okay, so I didn't have 1 1/2 pounds of apples; I only had 4. So my cake wasn't as apple filled as I would have liked. Also, after I sprayed the bundt pan, I sprinkled cinnamon sugar on the bottom of the pan like this:
I was hoping for a bit more crunch to the cake. It did make the outer crust more like a crust than soft moist cake, but not really what I was going for.

After I poured in the first layer, I dumped a third of my apples, but when I poured batter enough to cover them, there wasn't going to be enough batter to do four layers of batter, so I dumped the rest of the apples on that layer and then the rest of the batter. I didn't measure that first 1/4 very well... I also sprinkled more cinnamon sugar on top of the apple layers. I love cinnamon...
I baked the cake about 5 minutes longer than the recipe said to. The knife came out still wet after the time was up, so I tried 5 more minutes and it was perfect timing. That's some yummy GBG (golden brown goodness) right there.
I let the cake cool in the bundt pan for about 15 min and then turned it over onto the cake holder base. I let it cool for about another hour before I let my dad cut into it. You can see in the last picture just how "moist" this cake was, especially around the chunks of apples (which, of course were wet from the lemon juice). I think I am going to cut back on the oil and butter next time. Kinda of cut out the same percentage of both or something. At one point, I used my fingers and the knife to help guide the piece of cake to the plate and my hand came away a bit slickish. Not greasy so much as just moist.

It has a lot of flavor and there would be even more if I had more apples. The cake itself has a very buttery vanilla taste to it, which is good, but also very filling, so a small piece of this will get you full fast.
All in all, a good cake for the apple lovers out there.

Oh, and one of my co-workers brought me their copy of my apple bread recipe, so I'll be making that soon!