My Mom's Sunken Apple Cake (sounds really weird writing this in English) always was one of my favourite cakes and one of the first cakes I wanted to learn to make myself. As kid, I always thought this to be a secret recipe my German Mom invented herself because non of my Swiss friend's Moms made this kind of Apple Cake where the apples are sunken into the fluffy cake (I never actually asked her, I just decided it to be like this myself and never questioned it).
Of course it's not my Mom's inventions, it's a pretty common German Apple Cake and you'll find tons of recipes exactly like that with a quick google search. This recipe just turns out fluffy, light and perfectly golden, every time I make it so I had to share mine. I'm not the best baker (I'm a better cook than baker but I love baking more than cooking, does that make any sense?) , so having this staple recipe that somehow always works out great, is a life saver.
This also is the only recipe I regularly use apples in because I'm not the biggest fan of apples but as soon as Late Summer and Autumn hit, I like to replace the apples with apricots or plums (even though it would be the perfect apple season too...).
My favourite late afternoon cake because it's sweet but not too sweet, it has apples in but not too many apples and it makes me satiated without feeling full and if you just need some chocolate that day, make a hot chocolate to drink with it.
Now that writing about apple cake and hot chocolate made me miss cold Autumn days, I better stop this.
What you'll need:
125g Butter
125g Sugar
200g Plain White Flour
3 Large Eggs (separated)
2 Ts Baking Powder
3 Tbs Milk (if you only have small eggs on hand, add to additional 2 Tbs Milk)
550g (or 3 mid sized) Apples
1 half of a lemon (grated peel and juice)
1 Vanilla Bean
Methode:
Line your Springform bottom with a baking sheet. Lay your baking sheet over the bottom, put on the rim and close the Springform, make sure the baking sheet lies flat. Then carefully rip off the excess and use some of the excess baking sheet to butter the rim really well. If you have space in your fridge, cool the buttered tin form until you need it later on. Preheat your oven to 200 Degrees Celsius.
Peel, core and quarter your apples. Carefully slice your apples without slicing fully through the apple. The quarters should stay in shape. Put them into a bowl and add the lemon juice. Slowly toss the apples in the lemon juice so the juice is evenly distributed (if you're worried about your apples breaking, toss the quarters in the lemon juice before slicing them) and put the bowl away for later (don't put it in the fridge though).
In a large bowl cream together the sugar, egg yolks and room temperature butter with your hand mixer. Give this time to get the sugar to properly dissolve in the egg yolks and butter. You might get bored a little while doing this so make sure you'll listen to a Podcast or watching a show on the streaming provider of your choice (bluetooth earphones help!).
Add the seed of the vanilla bean and the lemon peel, to the creamed eggs and mix well.
In a second bowl, sieve together the Flour and Baking Powder. Even though I usually don't like using baking powder that much, with this cake, I always did, so I'm not sure what happens if you leave it away.
Now add the Flour alternately with the Milk, to the creamed egg-butter-sugar mixture until all the ingredients are just moistened but there are no pockets of dry flour in the batter. Don't get nervous if the batter seems too firm, the firmness is needed support the weight of the apples, so they don't just sink to the bottom and be drowned by the rising cake.
Beat your egg withes to stiff peaks and slowly fold them into your batter by hand.
Carefully put the batter into your Springform and even more carefully help the batter spread evenly in the tin. You don't want to press out all the air from the egg whites here. Now add the Apple quarters on the batter and add sprinkle some sugar onto the quarters. You don't have to push them into the dough to make them sink in. This will happen in the oven.
Bake for 30-35min, 200° Celsius.
If you check the cake if it's done, stab it a few times make sure you're nowhere near an apple so you don't over bake the cake in the end.
Let the cake cool down properly and then dust it with some powdered sugar. Enjoy your first slice while still slightly warm, so don't feel bad if you're the first one the eat a piece of that cake, all by yourself, while leaning onto your kitchen counter.
This cake will be a forever staple so PLEASE let me know if you're making this.
(Send me a DM with your picture on Instagram @hollylovesplanning, I guess?)
If it ever happens that someone comes along this recipe without context of my Instagram Account, I shared these pictures I took last night at 10pm and was asked to share the recipe. Because I'm a lazy MF, I couldn't care less to take any additional pictures for this Blog Post. Sorry for that.