Cake Hacking - Spiced apple buckle cake..

I seem to be running out of excuses about avoiding eggs. Yes, I have a teensy fear of  eggs. I enjoy them as much as anybody else, in custards, cakes, cookies & ice cream, but the mere mention of trying to buy a box, and my brain goes into an overdrive to come up with bizzarre excuses to get away from that part of the grocery store. I've analyzed & hyper analyzed it & am perfectly aware that I sound like one of those afflicted  patients described in V.S Ramachandran's book 'Phantoms in the brain', perfectly capable of acknowledging that my quirk is 'eggcentric' to say the least, but balk at the thought of doing something to overcome it.

Eggs or no eggs, I still love cake and constantly jump at the opportunity to try my luck at creating egg free confections. Some worked great, others... not so much.

Given how easy it is to miss out on recipes that are posted via twitter, it was a delightful surprise to spot a recipe from Oprah.com for a Raspberry buckle cake. Since Raspberries are hard to come by at this time of the year, I substituted a mix of blueberries and chopped strawberries to try her recipe out. Unbelievable that all it had was five ingredients (including the salt!).

Curious to try out variants, I opted for using apples (only because I had a whole bag of organic granny smiths that needed to be used. There's only so much apple salsa that can be scarfed down!)

The minute you think apple, the next word in that train of thought is usually caramel, and by the end of that train of thought, I had my recipe ready (in my head) . All that was needed was a good execution, helped by some handy 'shortcuts', lying around in the form of butter caramel toffees.

Spiced Caramel Apple buckle cake
(recipe inspired by and adapted from Marcia Kiesel &Liz Pearson's recipe on Oprah.com)

You need:

 1.5 cups (210 gms) self rising flour

1/4 cup melted butter (1/2 a stick , 4 tablespoons)

1 large granny smith apple, peeled, cored & diced into small pieces

1 tub (3.5 cups) Haagen Dazs Dulce de leche (or vanilla) ice cream

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 cup light brown sugar

6-8 butter caramel toffees

1/2 cup water

(for the spice flavoring)

4 cloves

4 cardamom pods (seeds only)

1 inch piece cinnamon

2 tablespoons fresh ginger extract

1/2 a granny smith apple, peeled, cored and cut into 6 thin slices of uniform size for decorating 

Set the ice cream out on to the counter to melt. Liberally butter the bottom and the sides of a 9 inch baking pan or dish. Pre heat oven to 375 F.

Combine the water, sugar, spices, ginger extract along with the apples in a saucepan. Cook on  gentle heat until the apples are soft. Spoon out the cooked apples into a bowl and strain the sugar syrup to remove the spices. Return the syrup to the saucepan and add the caramel toffees  (those in India wishing to try this out, I'd recommend using those cardamom flavored Parle 'Kismi' brand toffees say about 12 - 15 of the small ones). On low heat, allow the toffees to melt and thicken the syrup to a molasses / treacle consistency.
Add back the cooked apples and allow the mix to cool completely. (you may opt to add the 1/2 stick cold butter into the apple mixture to melt it in lieu of adding it separately)

Sift the self rising flour and  salt into a mixing bowl. Using a hand mixer on low speed, gently whisk in the ice cream, the apple mixture and melted butter until its completely incorporated.

Pour the mixture into the buttered baking dish. Arrange the apple slices as shown.

Place the dish into the preheated oven for about 30 minutes, turning the dish around halfway through the baking until the top of the cake is golden brown.  If the surface seems to be browning too fast, reduce the temperature to 350 F. Remove the cake onto a cooling rack.

Spoon out or cut into  squares and serve warm or at room temperature with a hot cup of coffee.

 Bon appetit!