Marie-Helene would be quite welcome in our home.
Especially if she showed up with an apple cake.
Of course, we don’t know Marie-Helene, and she doesn’t know us, so the odds of her arriving at our door, still-warm-from-the-oven gâteau aux pommes (I’m dabbling in French) are pretty darn slim.
Good thing Dorie gave us a recipe so I can make this myself!
I actually made this a while ago, right at the beginning of October. It’s an incredibly easy cake to put together. Actually, it’s just barely a cake. It’s more like a whole bunch of apple slices held together in a group hug by soft sweet arms of batter.
Okay, yeah, that’s a bit of a weird image.
Moving on…
I preheated the oven and greased a springform pan.
And then I gathered the (very minimal) ingredients.
And I took a picture of them. Of course.
I have four different apples, and I should have written them down, of course, but I didn’t. At least, I don’t think I did. But I think I had a Granny Smith, a MacIntosh, a Gala, and…another one. Cortland, maybe? Oh I don’t know. Can’t even pretend.
I peeled them.
And I sliced them in half.
And I sliced them up and mixed them together in a bowl.
Oh, and I took pictures. Of course.
I whisked eggs, and added sugar.
I added the already-whisked-but-unphotographed dry ingredients to the egg/sugar mixture and did some more whisking.
And then I folded the apples into the batter.
Don’t they look happy?
Okay, apple slices and batter! Into the pan you go!
They looked so happy. I took a picture. Of course.
And into the oven they went.
I felt a bit like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, but really, the apples didn’t mind in the least.
Don’t they look happy?
I thought so. So I took another picture.
Look – it’s like they’re waving!
Ohhhhhhhhhh, and it smelled so good!
Now, mine didn’t have that nice brown top crust like the one in Dorie’s book, but I think maybe my apples were on the large side and they took up a lot of space and the batter was spread a bit too thin to form that crust. Hmmm…batter spread too thin…sounds like that should be a pun.
Oh well. No time for puns at the moment.
Even without that brown crusty effect on top, the cake still looked very tasty.
I served this to my family and my husband’s cousin and his wife and daughters, and if I remember correctly, everyone liked it very much.
Of course.
And I had a slice of it the next morning for breakfast. It goes well with coffee and the paper.
So I took another picture. Of course.
If you’d like to read about this apple cake some more, go check out the rest of the French Fridays with Dorie links – right here!
