German Apple Cake

I don't know why I ever doubt Allrecipes.com.  When I am looking at recipes, I often find myself skipping over the links to that site to browse "real blogs" instead.  And why?  It's regular people, home chefs, who want to share their best recipes.  Then literally hundreds of people try it out, rate it, and write comments.  The recipes on there are tried and true.  After all, this is the place that gave me my overnight caramel pecan rolls.   Why am I such a blog snob?

If there is anything I can learn from this apple cake, it is to give Allrecipes more of a chance, because yet again, it proved to be a goldmine of recipes.  After apple picking, my mom had more apples than she knew what to do with, and she requested an apple cake.  I told her to pick a recipe for me, and she chose this one.  Being a snob, I whined about it, but even I couldn't ignore the 849 reviews, or the 4 1/2 star rating.   I decided to give it a try, and I am so glad that I did.  This cake was probably one of the most uniformly-loved desserts I have made in a long time.

My mom was in love with it that night that I made it, and took some home with her.  Then we sent some over to Mark's parents and they loved it too.  A few days later, I noticed that we still had a few pieces, so I cut them up and walked up to my grandmother's, where she had a house full of people who all tried it.  Everyone fell in love immediately and I handed out the recipe to two different people.

And that's the other great part.  This cake was pretty easy and the ingredient list was short.  No weird ingredients - it's just flavored with cinnamon and vanilla, with the apples of course.  That's not to say it isn't flavorful, and moist, and stays good for days and days.  It just lets the apples - 4 whole cups of them, diced - shine without overpowering you with any unneeded spice.

At this time of year, lots of people seem to have the wonderful problem of too many apples.  May I kindly suggest making applesauce (recipe to come soon!) or this delicious German apple cake?

Recipe:

German apple cake
from Allrecipes.com


Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 cups apples - peeled, cored, and diced

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour a 9 x 13" cake pan.

2) In a mixing bowl, beat the oil and eggs with an electric mixer until creamy.  Add the sugar and vanilla and beat well.

3)  Combine the flour, salt, baking soda, and ground cinnamon together in a bowl.  Slowly add this mixture to the egg mixture and mix until combined.  The batter will be very thick.  Fold in the apples by hand using a wooden spoon.  Spread batter into the prepared pan.

4) Bake for 45 minutes of until cake tests done.  Let cake cool on a wire rack.

Serve with ice cream, perhaps?