Apples! Apples! Apples!!!  They are everywhere this time of year!  It’s a good thing that I love them.  In fact, I am a bit of an apple snob.  I refuse to eat them off season, but once September comes around my apple a day becomes three apples a day – time to make up for the 9 month-long apple drought.  As a result, I feel like I have to get all my apple cooking and baking done in the span of a few months.  Today it’s the apple cake, next week it might be the cider donut muffins, possibly a savory apple quiche, how about an apple salad? apple crisp, apple curry, and a year cannot go by without an apple pie.  It just can’t.

The apple cake that I decided to test out this year has a slightly different flavor profile then your usual “run of the mill” cinnamon and brown sugar apple cake.  While I love cinnamon, I was feeling up for trying something new.  By the time that I had a baking plan in mind, my entire counter was littered with cookbooks open to apple cake recipes.  It always seems to amaze me, how many different recipes there are for the same few things, and here I go adding another one to the mix.  I ended up modeling my cake, especially appearance-wise, after the recipe found in the Smitten Kitchen cookbook.

Ingredients:

• 5-6 baking Apples peeled, cored, and diced
• 1/2 cup Honey + 3 tbsp Honey
• 1 tsp ground Cardamom + 1/2 tsp ground Cardamom
• juice from 1/2 a Lemon
• 2 1/2 cups Flour
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1/2 cup Sugar
• 1/2 tsp freshly grated Nutmeg
• 1/2 cup Apple Cider
• 3/4 cups Canola Oil
• 4 Eggs (cracked and beaten)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (~176 C).
2. Dress the apples in the 3 tbsp honey, 1 tsp cardamom, and lemon juice.  Lightly stir the apples until they are each evenly coated, and set them aside to rest.  The lemon juice will prevent them from turning brown while you put together the cake batter.
3. Grease your cake pan.  I used an angels food pan, but any basic tube pan should work.
4. Combine all of your dry ingredients together including the 1/2 tsp of cardamom and the nutmeg.
5. In a small bowl whisk together your 1/2 cup of honey and cider.
6. Whisk in the oil.
7. Whisk in the eggs.
8. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ones, and mix them together until the cake batter is uniform.
9. Pour half of your cake batter into the bottom of you greased cake pan.
10. Spoon half of the apples evenly over the cake batter.
11. Pour in the rest of the batter – make sure to spread it evenly.
12. Spoon the rest of the apples on top.
13. Bake for 1 1/2 hours.
14. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.