Recipe: Spiced Apple Cake

It all started one Autumn afternoon.....NAH! It actually started about 30 or so years ago when my parents went to local greenhouse, and picked out trees for their backyard. This tree has grown and grown over the years, and we usually get some of the harvest. Well, this year the tree was happy that my dad didn't cut it down last year.... (The winds blew off and wasted most all the apples...and he was expecting me to pick them, but I told him I didn't have the time and something had come up as well....)...that was a bit of a mess, but the tree is still here and this years' bounty was plentiful.

I really tried to get up to the top and pick, but I was not as nimble as I would have liked to be to get at those apples, and those upper branches wouldn't hold my weight. But me and the little one came away with a box full of apples, that we need to bake, freeze, eat...do something with! Only so many can fit in the fridge. The trials of harvest time LOL.

So it began...with making an apple crumble. And the process goes like this....look for a regular recipe. Then take approved regular recipe and modify it for gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, etc, etc.

As Thanksgiving weekend in Canada approached along with a birthday, I let my dad know I would drop off an apple baked item for him to enjoy. It turned into an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner at their house, and we brought an apple cake. Most all our recipes are spiced, so it seems redundant to call it a Spiced Apple Cake, but it is. And it was good!

And so began the process again...look for a recipe...try and modify recipe....and go! .... Well, a recipe was found, but when we went to go do the mods, we realized it was not a good fit....it required way too much sugar even though we could modify, and way too much flour. So I decided to do the next best thing, modify a recipe that we already know and love, which was originally modified from Martha Stewart's Banana Bread recipe. This is the link to the first mod from almost 10 years ago Spiced banana banana bread. No bananas this time though as we needed to save them for my son's famous Banana Berry Bread with dark chocolate chunks that was requested for the next day... OY! That was so good!!

Here is the original recipe for the Martha Stewart recipe without the mods...

Banana Bread

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature, plus more for pan
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup mashed very ripe bananas
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

The mods are as follows .....

1. We used grapeseed oil instead of butter and we use a little less....so just shy of 1/2 cup. If it was a doubled recipe (which we usually make 😉 ), we would use 3/4 oil instead of 1 cup. You could also use 1/2 cup of coconut oil. 
2. We used 1 cup of coconut sugar instead of white granulated sugar. That way we can do the straight 1 cup amount and it not be too sweet. If we were using honey, we would do half the amount.
3. We used 2 chia eggs instead of chicken eggs. For one chia egg, we measure 1 tablespoon of ground chia seed and mix it with 5 tablespoons of warm water (75 ml). So we mixed 2 tablespoons of chia seeds with 150 ml of water. 
4. For the flour, we always modify it to be gluten-free.  This time around, we used 3/4 cup of chickpea flour (besan) with 3/4 cup of cassava flour (forgot the milled named for it, but it's a fine texture). Our favourite flour to use is actually Urad flour (made from mungo beans) which we find at our grocery store, but also at East/West Indian stores as well. You could also use a gluten free flour mix if you like.
5. The baking soda is the same, but we use 1/2 of the recommended amount of salt anytime we bake. So for this recipe we used 1/2 teaspoon of Himalayan sea salt.
6. We SWAPPED out the bananas for apples. I really am not sure how many apples the boys cut up into little cubes (1 cm sized roughly). When I looked over at the bowl of chopped apples I said "STOP! That's good!" LOL. I would say about 4 cups. 
7. We didn't use sour cream, vanilla extract, or chopped nuts or seeds HOWEVER we added spices
8. For the spices, I believe I recommended to my son to use 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, ginger, and allspice each. usually it's wild shaking into the bowl until I feel it's enough, depending on the mood. 
9. And that's pretty much it for the ingredients!! 

Spiced Apple Cake

• 1/2 cup of coconut oil, at room temperature, plus more for pan OR just a little less of 1/2 cup grapeseed oil
• 1 cup coconut sugar
• 2 chia eggs
• 1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour 
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon Himalayan sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• approx. 4 cups cubed apples, about 1cm or finger's width in size
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
• Directions
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  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bundt pan or loaf pan or 8" by 8" square pan or equivalent round pan...whichever you choose and set it aside.
• 2.  In a large bowl or a mixer, beat oil and chia eggs (and vanilla if you are using) until creamy. Add coconut sugar and blend in until well mixed.
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  3. In a smaller bowl, whisk or sift together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt. 
• 4. Add flour mixture to the wet mixture and mix well. Stir in apples and pour into prepared pan.
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  5. Bake for about 45 minutes. Insert cake tester to check if it is done (comes out clean). Let cake rest for about 10 minutes before turning it out on a plate or rack to cool.