Passover Apple Cake

This is a pareve Kosher for Passover apple cake that is actually... well, good. It doesn't have that odd aftertaste that a number of things with cake meal have, and although it's heavy, it has a fluffy enough cakey feel.

If you would like to try out this recipe at a different time of year, the general conversion is 1 cup flour = 5/8 cup cake meal. (The recipe is really thick and sticky, though, so once you get to two cups of flour, use your best judgement on how much more you might need to add.) Also, if you can't find cake meal, you can substitute matzoh meal, but it turns out a little bit grainier.

Ingredients

CAKE

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups cake meal
• 2 tablespoons potato starch

FILLING

• 3 pounds apples, sliced
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

TOPPING

• 1/2 chopped nuts
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If you work as slowly as I do in the kitchen, you can hold off until you start making the apple filling because otherwise, Apartments Of Unusual Size (unusually small anyway) get overheated very quickly.

Method

Batter

Crack the eggs into a large bowl.

Beat them well! I like to do things by hand as much as possible when I bake, but you can use a mixer if that's your thing.

Mix together the sugar, meal, and starch in a separate bowl.

Pour the oil into the bowl with the eggs. Once you've mixed up the sugar, starch, and meal, add it to the eggs and oil. You'll want to do this a little at a time because the batter gets very stiff very quickly.

(I'm not joking about the stiff batter!)

Next, spread half of the batter into the bottom of a greased 13x9x2 inch pan.

The batter is very sticky and doesn't like to spread well, so you may have to fight with it a bit. And it just has to cover the bottom of the pan, it doesn't have to be very thick. The recipe is mostly apples, with the cake bit just holding everything together. (Think like an apple crisp, only more cakey and less crispy.)

Filling

Set the bowl with the remaining batter and the pan aside for now, and get ready to prepare the apple filling. Peel three pounds of apples (about six decent-sized ones, give or take.) Mmm, naked apples. Oh, yeah, baby.

Slice up the apples, trying not to cut your finger. Start putting the apple slices into a bowl.

Realize that the bowl isn't big enough. Switch to a saucepot. Pour the sugar and cinnamon over the sliced apples.

Squeeze out the juice of one lemon, which is around four tablespoons. Swear a lot because OWW FREAING LEMON JUICE I FORGOT I CUT MY FINGER! (You can skip that part if you're lucky.) Add lemon juice to the applepot and mix it all up with the sugar and cinnamon.

Just a note: You get more juice if you use room temperature lemons rather than ones straight from the fridge. You'll also get more juice if you roll it on the counter a little bit before slicing into it.

Make an effort not to steal any apples from the pot. Fail miserably. Realize you left the spatula sitting in the batter and it stuck to it, leaving a hole in the bottom of the batter in the pan. Swear. Fix it.

Pour the apple mixture into the pan and spread it as evenly as possible across the top of the batter. It'll pretty much fill the pan to the top.

Spread the rest of the batter on top of the apples. It's generally pretty sticky and doesn't spread well, especially on a surface like the apples that likes to move. What I like to do is take small teaspoons of batter and drop them along the surface of the cake, then mush them together. Even if it doesn't cover all of the apples perfectly, it spreads out a little while it cooks. (I don't have a picture of this, sorry.)

Topping

Also, there is topping! Which brings me to the next step. Put the chopped nuts, cinnamon, and sugar into a bowl, and mix them up well. I like to use pecans because pecans are delicious and go well with apples, but you could use walnuts or whatever else you want.

Pour the nut mixture over the top layer of batter.

Baking Directions

Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. (No, that's not some sort of alien spaceship, despite the eery blue light. It's just the oven.)

It's done when a toothpick in the middle comes out clean (except for maybe a little apple/sugar residue). There may still be a little liquid/lemon juice in the corners of the pan, but that's ok.

Serving Suggestions

Let cool for ten to fifteen minutes so that any liquid will congeal and it won't be so messy. Serve straight from the pan.

It's good both warm and cold, although it's awfully delicious cold for breakfast. Toss a little non-dairy whipped topping on there, and you're good to go. (Or whipped cream, but that makes it not pareve.)

So there you have it. It tastes so good that you'll say, "I can't believe there's no leaven!"