Roasted Apple Spice Cake

Now that you have your homemade applesauce ready, you can make this cake and eat it too. And I do recommend eating it – it is amazingly delicious. Roasting the apples makes it taste like you have little pockets of apple pie hiding inside your cake. Seriously, who doesn’t want that?

You’re going to have to peel the apples anyway and roasting the apple halves gives you time to figure out if you really want to make cream cheese frosting from scratch or not. I won’t tell if you decide to grab the pre-made stuff if you don’t tell about my habit of using Skippy brand peanut butter in recipes that call for “all natural” peanut butter. Deal?

Roasted Apple Spice Cake

From Smitten Kitchen

This recipe will get you a single-layer 9-inch round cake. Double to make a layer cake or if you are cooking for a crowd like Deb was originally, quadruple to make a giant sheet cake. I was cooking for me, hence the quartering of the recipe proportions you see below.

Cake

1 apple, peeled, halved, cored

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Dash cloves

Dash nutmeg

1/4 cup honey

3/4 cup applesauce

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

3/4 cup packed dark-brown sugar

1 egg

Frosting
1 8-ounce blocks cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Make the cake: Heat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet or roasting pan with parchment paper. Arrange apple halves face down on paper and roast in a single layer until they feel dry to the touch and look a little browned underneath, about 20 minutes. Slide parchment paper with apples onto a cooling rack and set aside. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F.

Butter or non-stick spray one 9-inch cake pan and line the bottoms with a fitted rectangle of parchment paper. Butter the paper as well.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. In a medium bowl, whisk together applesauce and honey.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat the butter and dark brown sugar until very fluffy. Add the egg and scraping down the bowl. Add one third of the flour-spice mixture and mix it until just combined. Add half the applesauce-honey mixture, again mixing it until combined. Add the second third of the flour-spice mixture, the remaining applesauce-honey mixture, and the remaining flour-spice mixture, stirring between each addition.

Chop roasted apples into smallish chunks (1/2 to 2/3-inches) and fold into batter. Bake cake about 30 to 35 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer baking pan to cooling racks and let rest for 10 minutes, before flipping out of the pans onto racks, removing the parchment paper lining, and cooling the cake right-side-up.

Make the frosting: Whip butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixture until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract. Add powdered sugar and beat again until smooth and light.

Assemble the cake: Stick your cake on the closest plate or stand you can find, smother it with frosting, and dig in!

Serves one.

(or six, depending how you feel that day)