Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Holiday Cake

Right now, Bones is in the hospital, awaiting an ultrasound of his liver, to figure out why he was sick and acting strangely yesterday. I am anything but relaxed. However, I've been meaning to write this post for ages, so I'm going to do it anyway.

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Terri's Jewish Apple Cake Recipe



A long time ago, when I was in the later years of elementary school, my mom bought a home and school produced cook book from one of my younger cousins. You know the kind, with recipes contributed by kids' moms, spiral bound, and with some student art on the cover. At some point, my mom started making this recipe for Jewish Apple Cake. It was (and is) really good.



Sixteen years ago today, CPM and I had our first date (heh, did not realize that until just this minute). You know how in the first blush of a relationship, you go over all the reasons that you are "meant" to be with this person? I claim this cake as one of them. The recipe, you see, was CPM's mom's contribution to the elementary school cook book. (He and my cousin had attended the same elementary school.)

I can sort of recall the moment that I realized this...I was standing in my mom's kitchen, and somehow the topic of the cake came up. I pulled out the cookbook, looked at his mother's name next to the recipe, and it smacked me in the face, that my family had been eating and enjoying this cake of his mom's for years before I ever met CPM. If that isn't destiny talking, I'm not sure what it was.

I make the cake every year at Christmas. While CPM and I don't actually observe the holiday, preferring instead to eat Thai food and watch bad TV or a movie, some things are sacred, like the annual cookie baking. This cake is one of those things. It's easy to bake, and is quite amazing tasting. Make it. You won't be sorry.

I keep the recipe on the same piece of spiral notebook paper that I copied it onto. The paper is stained, and crinkled, from being used so many times.

Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
1 TBSP cinammon
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
4 cups flour
4 TSP baking powder
1 TSP salt
1 cup orange juice
1 cup oil
4 large applies, peeled, cored and sliced thinly

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine 3/4 cup sugar with 1 TBSP cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside. Grease and flour a tube cake pan.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream eggs and sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the apples, and mix well. The batter will be very thick.

Add 1/2 of the batter to the prepared cake pan. Add apples and 2/3 of the sugar mixture, gently smooshing apples into the cake batter. Add the remaining batter, covering the apples evenly. Sprinkle the batter with the remaining sugar. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Remove cake from oven, cool on wire rack.

Getting this thing out of the pan can be a challenge. I normally loosen it with a cake spatula, put a plate on top of the cake (it will have risen over the top of the cake pan), flip the cake out of the pan, then put a plate on the bottom of the cake, and flip it back over. You will get cinnamon sugar all over yourself and the floor, but this is the only way to get it out.

Eat and enjoy. (Sorry for the crap photos, I've been using my iPhone for everything lately. My poor DSLR sits lonely in a basket in the foyer of the house. I think I need an EyeFi card for it.)

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