It can’t be fall without my making an apple cake we first had when we were living in Germany. I call it Bavarian for it was down in Bavaria at a country inn that I first had this treat. My German being what it isn’t, I couldn’t ask the innkeeper for the recipe. Which started the Great Bavarian Apple Cake Quest. I found out that there are hundreds of recipes for Apple Cake in Germany. Every cook over there has an Apple Cake recipe, but none of them were quite what I had eaten in Bavaria. I eventaully found a recipe close to the original from Bavaria in all places, a children’s cookbook from Rhode Island. The children had collected ethnic recipes from their families and published them in a little fund raising cookbook.
The German grandmother called her recipe Bavarian Apple Dapple Cake, but I don’t know what the Dapple refers too. Substitute Delicious for Dapple and you get the idea. This bakes up in a tube pan with a nice glaze that makes is so rich and fall-like.
Bavarian Apple Dapple Cake:
1 ½ cups oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
3 cups peeled apples
1 teaspoons vanilla
Beat oil, sugar and eggs in mixer. Stir in the flour, soda, and salt. Coarsely chop the raisins, nuts and apples in a food processor. Add to batter with the vanilla. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 ½ hours in a tube pan.
While the Apple Dapple Cake is still warm brush on with a pastry brush, the icing. ½ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup butter and ¼ cup milk. Boil the icing mixture for 3 minutes.
