Fresh Apple Coffee Cake

Today's adventure comes from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible.  I found this cookbook on Half.com a couple of years.  I was thrilled to find it because it is now out-of-print and I've read such good things about this book.  I completely forgot that I had the book and "stumbled" upon it as I was straightening up my cookbooks.  Low and behold, there is was!!  Like a volt of lightening!  The Baking Gods were speaking to me - "bake something out of this book, Diane", they whispered (yeah, I know I need to get a life!!).

I had several recipes bookmarked and this was one of them.  As fate would have it, I was in luck because I had all the ingredients EVEN one orange for the orange zest and way, way back in my freezer a can of frozen orange juice - see it was meant to be!!

Here is the recipe:

Fresh Apple Coffee Cake

Ingredients

4 cups peeled, cored and coarsely chopped cooking apples (roughly 4 or 5 medium sized apples) - I used golden delicious
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 T ground cinnamon
3 cups all purpose flour (it called for unbleached which I didn't have-don't think this will make any difference)
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 T baking powder
grated zest of 1 orange
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup fresh or frozen orange juice

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan or bundt pan (yeah!! I finally get to use my fancy bundt pan!!)
In a small bowl, combine the apples, brown sugar and the cinnamon - set aside

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, white sugar, baking powder and orange zest (your house is going to smell wonderful with all that orange and cinnamon!!). 
In a large bowl, using a mixer beat the 4 eggs and the vegetable oil until thick and creamy - roughly about 2 minutes on high speed.

Now add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, blend thoroughly just enough to moistened.  Do not overmix, but there should be no lumps or dry spots.

Spoon one third of the batter into your bundt pan.  Cover evenly with half of the apple mixture.



Cover the apples with another one third of the batter.  Use a spatula to smooth the batter evenly over the apples.  Repeat with the remaining apples and batter - ending with a smooth layer of batter.

Place the pan on a rack in the center of the oven and bake for 60 minutes.  Cover loosely with a piece of aluminum foil and bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Remove the pan from the oven and let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for about an hour.  Invert on a rack to cool completely before serving. 

I sprinkled the cake with powdered sugar, just to make it look pretty.  The recipe doesn't call for it.  I think next time I might drizzle some icing on it - you know powdered sugar with milk added to make it semi-runny (that's a technical term!!)

Enjoy!!

VERDICT

We have a winner!!  My husband loved it!!  The cake is very moist - nice flavor.  Next time I might add chopped pecans to the apples.  My husband ate several pieces last night and he made me promise to put at least 3 pieces in his lunch today.  SUCCESS!!