Apple Cake with a Cinnamon Meringue Topping

I love meringue, one of my favorite cakes is the rhubarb meringue that I posted quite a while ago. So I was very excited when I came across this recipe for an apple cake with a cinnamon meringue topping.

Ingredients:
Baking sheet
some extra flour

Yeast dough:
200 ml milk
25 g butter or margarine
375 g wheat flour
1 package active dried yeast
50 g sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch of salt
3 egg yolks

Topping:
3 pounds of apples
1 package vanilla pudding and 2 tablespoons of sugar or Jell-O
400 ml milk

Meringue:
3 egg whites
100 g powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Optional: Sliced hazelnuts or chopped walnuts

Preparation:
1. Warm up milk, dissolve butter or margarine in warm milk. When milk is lukewarm, stir in sugar, salt, vanilla and yeast.
2. Sift flour into a bowl. Make a little dent into the middle of the flour, then pour in the milk-yeast mixture. Cover bowl and let yeast become active for about 10 minutes.
3. Add egg yolks and knead everything into one smooth dough. Cover dough and let rise until the dough has visibly increased in size.
4. Peel and core apples, cut into quarters, then cut into slices.
5. Knead dough on a floured surface, roll out on put on a baking sheet. While yeast is rising again, prepare vanilla custard of Jell-O. Spread custard or Jell-O onto yeast dough, then add apple slices.
6. Bake cake at 180 degrees Celsius (350 F) for about 25 min. In the meantime, prepare meringue.
7. Whisk egg whites to stiff peaks, slowly add powdered sugar and cinnamon, and whisk until stiff. Fill meringue into a piping bag and decorate the cake. Sprinkle nuts on top of the cake and bake for another 15 min.

Comments:
1. The bottom was very crunchy when the cake was fresh, but the next day it had softened.

Photo to be added later

Apple Bread

I really love this recipe, even though it still needs some tweaking. It is a real bread, and is wonderful for breakfast with butter and/or jam.

Ingredients:

1 9x5 inch bread loaf pan

some grease

some breadcrumbs or flour

750 g apples (coarsely grated)

150 g brown sugar

600 g flour (see comments)

3 leveled teaspoons of baking powder

100 g raisins

100 g hazelnuts 

Preparation:

1. Grease a cake pan, sprinkle with breadcrumbs or flour.

2. Mix flour, baking powder and brown sugar, then stir in the apples.

2. Add raisins and hazelnuts.

3. Bake at 375F for about 75 min or until the toothpick comes out clean.

Comments:

1. The recipe calls for peeled apples, I used both peeled and unpeeled apples, and it not any different to me.

2. I am still tweaking the amount of flour, which I think depends on the moisture in the apples. The original recipe calls for 500 g; that was clearly not enough, the cake was too moist. So I've increased the amount of flour last time, which worked better. I didn't measure the amount, though. I’d say one needs so much flour in it that it takes some stirring to coat the flour with the moist apples.

3. You can certainly increase the amount of raisins and hazelnuts; last time  I didn’t even measure, I just poured them in. You can also exchange the dried fruits and nuts for others (e.g. cranberries and walnuts).

4. The dough is very heavy. If you don't have a loaf pan you can probably just bake it as a loaf on a baking sheet.

5. I also tried the recipe with Trader Joe's gluten-free flour, which worked surprisingly well!

Photo to follow later

Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

some grease for the baking pan (I used a bundt cake pan for this)
some flour or breadcrumbs for the baking pan

Batter:
300 g carrots
300 g wheat flour
1 pinch of salt
2 leveled teaspoons baking powder
1 leveled teaspoon baking soda
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
175 g brown sugar
200 g oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1 pinch ground cloves
150 g chopped walnuts
100 g raisins

Frosting:
200 g powdered sugar
30 g sour cream

Preparation:
1. Peel and grate carrots.
2. Preheat oven to 180°C (350 F). Grease baking pan, then cover baking pan with flour or breadcrumbs to make it easier to remove cake after baking
3. Mix flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl, then add eggs, vanilla, spices, brown sugar and oil and mix into a smooth batter. Add grated carrots, chopped walnuts and raisins. Pour batter into the greased pan and bake at 180°C (350 F) for 60 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.
4. Remove cake from oven, let cool down for 10 minutes, then remove cake from pan and let cool down fully.
5. Prepare frosting: mix powdered sugar and sour cream until frosting is very stiff. Glaze cake with the frosting.

Comments:
1. I used pumpkin spice mix instead, which worked great.
2. You don't have to use a fancy mixer for this cake, just stir it with a wooden spoon, the batter is rather liquid.