Tasty Tuesday: Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

This post could also be labeled, “baby’s first baking adventure” or “when the power goes out half-way through baking a cake.”  Both would be appropriate, but perhaps not as tempting.  If my post title doesn’t draw you in, does this photo help?

Okay, so maybe the cake tastes better than it looks.  I’m not much of a food stylist, what can I say?  Anyway, I saw this recipe on Pinterest and decided to bake it right up after some apple picking this weekend.  The good news: It was easy and tasty.  The bad news: It only used two apples, which leaves me with a lot more baking and eating to do!

But add a hatch mark to the good news tally, because I’ll bet you have everything you need to make this cake in your pantry right this second.

Oh, and I decided that it was high time Ike learned how to bake, so you’ll have to excuse me while I plaster his cute little mug all over this post.  And excuse his jammies (what, you don’t bake in your pajamas on Sunday mornings?).  All in all his first baking adventure went well.  He only fell off the chair once, and he only spilled a little bit of raw egg mixture all over the counter…

You’ll find the whole recipe here, but step one was to mix up the dry ingredients (flour, cinnamon, sugar, baking soda and salt) and the wet ingredients (eggs, oil and vanilla).  Then you combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and stir in some peeled and chopped apples.  It’s really that easy.

And feeding the toddler some apple slices helps.

When it’s all stirred up, pour the mixture into a greased cake pan (I used a round one, but you could use a square 8×8″ pan, as well).  Then tell your baby to point to the cake and say, “cake.”  Don’t forget the sippy.

While that’s baking for about 35 minutes, you get to whip up the glaze.  (Please note I distracted the toddler with some play dough at this point).  The recipe called for cream, which I didn’t have.  So I substituted half and half and it worked like a charm.  I’m guessing milk would be close, too.  But either way, it’s some sort of creamy milk product, vanilla, brown sugar and butter.

You melt it all and bring it to a gentle boil and cook it for about 3-5 minutes.  Or, in my case, until the power goes off.

Really, how unlucky to have the power go off in the middle of baking a cake, a load of laundry and a load of dishes in the dishwasher.  But luckily, the oven was warm enough that the cake continued baking.  The glaze, however, hardened before the cake was done.  So, get this, I had Chris heat it up on the grill outside!  It never went back to the pour-able consistency, but it was close enough.

Now, according to Chris, this cake doesn’t hold a candle to the apple crisp I made (substituting apples for the blueberries in this recipe), but he ate a couple of pieces, Ike was pleased as could be, and it worked out just fine for me.  Generally, I believe all apple recipes are created equal…I’m not too picky.

What do you say, will you have this cake made before lunch?