Just to follow up -- the recipe for Mom's Apple Cake on the Smitten Kitchen website was delicious. I baked it in a bundt pan and it baked faster than the recipe indicated. It was ready to come out of the oven the first time I tested it, after 1 1/4 hours.
I know that baking is often a precise science that requires fairly strict adherence to the recipe. That said, I took some liberties with the recipe as it was written, making the following modifications:
• I used a variety of apples, note of them Macintosh, cut into chunks.
• I DID pre-cook the apples briefly in the microwave, as suggested in a Cooks Illustrated recipe for a French apple cake. I don't really know if this was necessary, but I thought the apples in the cake were perfect.
• I mixed the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, rather than the other way around. I don't do much baking, but for some reason, that seemed to make more sense to me -- maybe because I had mixed the wet ingredients using the stand mixer.
• I "layered" the apples and batter a bit differently that the recipe indicated. I started with a layer of batter, then added half the apples, then another layer of batter, then the rest of the apples, and finally the remaining batter.
I doubt that any of these tweaks altered the recipe significantly. The cake was delicious and I'd definitely make it again.
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