First Fall Bake: Apple Pumpkin Cake
The iconic PSL from Starbucks was released on August 26 this year - almost a month before summer’s official end - and I started receiving Halloween (!) emails in August as well. Say it isn’t so! While I hang on tightly to the fleeting warmth of the sun and perhaps savor the precious last days of summer more than the average person, for the record, I do love fall. No surprise, my favorite thing about fall is the baking. My seasonal rule is no pumpkin before apples, the quintessential fall fruit. And under no circumstances should one partake of a pumpkin spice latte until after the autumnal equinox. But once we turn the calendar page, baking season is fair game. Bring on the apples, pears, pumpkin, and all the warm spices. My first fall bake was, appropriately, the Apple Pumpkin Cake from Zoë François at Zoë Bakes.
From bottom up, pumpkin, apple, streusel, butter pecan ice cream, apple chip.
Apple Pumpkin Cake
This recipe for Apple Pumpkin Cake (which I think would also work with pears) welcomes fall with open arms. Funny, when I was looking for canned pumpkin at the store, the young man working there informed me that pumpkin had been flying off the shelf since early September (people were clearly not following the rules). The good news is I noticed that Honeycrisp apples were $1.89 a pound at my little store, down from well over $3 a pound a month ago. But I digress cause this cake actually uses Granny Smith apples, although Honey Crisp would certainly work..
The recipe originates from Robin Asbell’s book on Whole Grains and beautifully combines three layers of fall flavors. The base is pumpkin cake, followed by a blanket of apples sauteed in cinnamon and sugar, covered with a thick sprinkle of streusel that conveniently makes it okay to eat for breakfast. Served with a scoop of ice cream and an apple chip, the easy-to-make cake becomes a dessert with a bit of fall fanfare. It checks all the boxes.
The autumn sun shining on a seasonal apple pumpkin cake.
Sauté the apples
Start with the middle layer, the sauteed cinnamon-sugar-covered tart apples.
Ingredients:
3 tbsp unsalted butter
4 large Granny Smith apples, peeled and thinly sliced
3 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Thinly slice your apples and add to pan. You can use your baking apple of choice if you don’t have Granny Smiths. Any crisp, tart apple such as the aforementioned Honey Crisp that keeps it shape will work. Saute apples until just starting to get soft. Take off heat and toss with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Set aside while you continue with the cake.
Make the streusel topping and cake batter
The pumpkin-cake base layer comes together easily with whole wheat pastry flour and canned pumpkin puree. In deciding what “fall bake” to make, I remembered that I had a bag of Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour in my garage fridge. I have no recollection of what I had in mind when I bought this, but it had never been opened and obviously meant I needed to make this cake.
You start by mixing the flour, brown sugar, salt, and butter, preferably in a stand mixer. Then you separate out 2/3 cup for the streusel, in a small bowl, add the sugar and pumpkin pie spice to this, and set aside. Then continue adding the remainder of the cake ingredients to the mixer.
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter softened
Add to streusel:
3 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Add to cake in stand mixer:
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup pumpkin puree (now what to do with the rest of the pumpkin?)
1/3 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
Layer and bake the cake
Pour the pumpkin cake mixture into the prepared cake pan. Then carefully pile the sautéed apples over the batter, using your hands as needed to spread out. Next, cover the apples with the streusel.
The recipe calls for baking at 350 degrees in an 8” springform pan for about an hour. I own a 9” springform, which worked fine. I covered the bottom with a round of parchment and buttered and floured the sides of the pan for easy release. I baked the full hour and then let the cake cool in the pan before removing the sides of the springform.
I just had a brilliant idea. I have a set of 4” springform pans that I’ve never used. I bought them to make Sarah Kiefer’s Creamy Jammy Coffee Cakes but haven’t done so yet. I think I’ll try the apple pumpkin cake divided up into the small-sized pans and serve as individual coffee cakes for breakfast. Google AI tells me that an 8-inch springform pan holds “four times the volume of a 4-inch springform pan, assuming both pans are the same height.” So that tells me that the recipe should work divided into four pans. The baking time will need adjusted though. I would start checking at 25 minutes.
One other note. I feel like my cake layers weren’t as pronounced as the photos on Zoe’s site. A thought occurred to me. When I cooked my apples, I had a fair amount of leftover liquid. I ended up pouring it all over the apples but now wonder if perhaps I needed one more apple to soak up the liquid. Too much moisture on top of the cake could have affected my bake. Where’s Paul Hollywood when you need him?
The pears selected in the art on the wall made me think that pears would also be good with the pumpkin cake.
Make your apple chips
You can make your own apple chips in the oven. Start the process when the cake is almost done baking. The best way is to slice an apple very thinly on a mandolin slicer. But if you’re like me and are afraid of using a mandolin, you can just use a sharp knife. I used my food processor, but I think a sharp knife may have yielded thinner slices than my food processor was able. I left the skin on just because I think that looks better.
First, for one apple, you need about 1/2 cup of simple syrup. Mix ½ cup granulated sugar and ½ cup water (equal parts) in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir constantly until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool.
Turn off the oven when you remove the cake. Dip each apple slice into the simple syrup, letting the extra drip off, and lay them on a Silpat or parchment-lined baking sheet. Place the sheet pan in the hot but turned off oven. Allow the apples to dry out for about an hour before opening the door.
I felt like they didn’t get as crisp as I wanted. I either needed thinner apples or needed to let them dry out longer. I ended up turning the heat up to 200 degrees and drying for another half hour or so. I also tried my air fryer … but yea, that just burnt the edges. Impatience doesn’t pay off. Remember they will become crisper as they cool. There’s always next time.
Apple chips dried in the oven add another dimension and a little drama to the apple pumpkin cake.
Eat Cake!
I confess that one of the reasons I wanted to make this cake was because of the presentation. I was going to serve it with vanilla ice cream but then was standing in the ice cream aisle staring at the Häagen-Dazs flavors debating between Butter Pecan, Vanilla Caramel Pecan, and Dulce de Leche. They all sounded compatible with my dessert, but between me and the woman at the register, Butter Pecan was determined the winner. It was perfect.
Since (wo)man cannot live on cake alone, or rather eat an entire cake alone, I invited some friends over at the last minute to share cake and kick off the fall season.
Cheers to fall!