Part of the fantastic amounts of food moving about our tables at the holidays was a big box of apples, a gift from our godmother. C & I hauled it home, the apples’ sweet smell escaping from the carton and making me sigh…they smelled so good! We unloaded our loot as soon as we arrived and I brought out our biggest white platter, piled the apples high, and placed it in the middle of our dining room table. It looked, and smelled, fabulous.
Just seeing the apples started a chain of apple-cooking-and-baking plans in my head, but this was the middle of the Christmas season and we were off to one place or another, buying gifts and having wonderful meals with family. So the apples remained piled high in the middle of our table, no less fabulous, but slowly and surely moving towards their use-by date.
Finally, I took them in my arms, murmured fervent apologies for the neglect, and promised that this was finally the day when they would become more than a centerpiece! The first dish I made was a delicious salad with apples and blue cheese. But I had to move fast, as there were still more apples that needed parts to play before they were past their prime. What to do? Well, there is one girl to turn to when you find yourself with an abundance of apples. You can throw her an orchard’s worth and she will juggle them into luscious home made treats with ease and aplomb. Her name is Pille and it was to her blog, Nami-Nami I went for a solution.
I chose to go with what she dubs her “most faithful apple cake recipe”: Kanada õunakook (Canadian Apple Cake). You will find the recipe here, along with the story of a Canadian cake in an Estonian (Pille’s from Estonia) cookbook. I stuck to the recipe pretty much exactly; except I didn’t have an eight inch springform pan so I used a regular pan but it still came out fine…obediently slipping out of the pan, almost as if it wanted me to love it. And my new pink cake stand makes its debut performance!
I cannot say enough both how delicious, and how easy to make, this cake is. It’s a cinnamon-laced cake, filled with apple chunks that go soft and sweet in the baking, adding moistness to the cake. To top it off, quite literally, is a cinnamon crumb mixture that melds beautifully into the cake, still chewy in some places, and crunchy in others. C & I both enjoyed it, with C exclaiming, “We should have this with vanilla ice cream!” And so the next day we bought a tub, carted the cake to my parents’ house, and shared our bounty with my mom, dad, and brother. But we are not the only ones who have enjoyed this cake…check out the other bloggers who have tried it.
Thank you Pille for being so generous with your apple expertise!
(and don’t think that this is the end of the apple posts…)