Two Takes on the Apple

I firmly believe that there are some fruits that shouldn't be messed with: the peach, for example, which I think cannot possibly be improved upon from its natural state, right off the tree. At most the only thing you can legitimately do to a peach without mucking it up is to wash it. Or, okay, put it in a Bellini.

I feel pretty much extremely the opposite way about the apple. While I really like the taste of apple, I don't get a big kick out of just chomping into a naked one. But I love to bake with apples, and I love most desserts cooked with apple (with the exception of the loathsome dessert of my youth, the hideous nightmare of the Dreaded Baked Apple. It's the childhood dessert equivalent of the vile Boiled Potatoes with Parsley.) Apple pie, tarte tatin, Jewish apple cake, apple cobbler - all these I find delicious and, especially when the weather turns autumnal, comforting.

On Saturdays Mr B M S and I spend some time hanging out with granddaughter #1, a spirited little 4 year old who likes to help in the kitchen. So this week I decided to try to make an apple dessert that a kid could make a significant contribution to, have some fun with, and also enjoy eating. (Last week's adventure in the kitchen involved baking cinnamon pretzels shaped like alphabet letters. All went well until she discovered the unbridled joy of kneading the pretzel dough with her feet.) Anyway, I got the inspiration from Martha Stewart for making apple-based cupcakes decorated to look like apples. I didn't use Martha's cupcake recipe, however, because I wanted my cupcakes to also taste like apples; I also didn't feel like spending two days making apple leaves out of fondant, so I used candy spearmint leaves instead. (*A note: Martha's apple cupcake recipe appears in a couple of different incarnations. In one she makes the apple leaves out of fondant. In another she uses "sour green apple candy strips" to cut out the leaves. I guess those are Fruit Roll-Ups but I'm not entirely sure. It's a lot easier to use spearmint leaves.) My 4 year old put as many spearmint leaves directly into her face as she did on the cupcakes, so those were a great choice for this project.

Maple, Walnut, and Apple Cupcakes

(yields one dozen full-size cupcakes)

1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temp

1 c. all-purpose flour

1 tsp. Saigon cinnamon

1/2 c. firmly packed brown sugar

1/4 c. Baldwin's Table Syrup*

2 eggs

2/3 c. walnuts, chopped

1 c. grated fresh apple

1/2 tsp. baking powder

Preheat the oven to 350 and line the muffin pan with cupcake liners.

Beat butter, flour, cinnamon, sugar, syrup, baking powder and eggs in the bowl of an electric mixer until the ingredients are combined. Turn the mixer off and fold in the nuts and apple, turning the batter in the bowl until the batter is homogenous. Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full with batter and bake for about 20 minutes, until the cupcakes are golden. Cool on wire racks and frost.

Maple Frosting

3 oz. butter, room temp

1 c. confectioners' sugar

2-3 tsp. maple flavoring

Beat the butter until smooth and creamy, and add the sugar and maple flavoring. Continue mixing until the icing is light and fluffy. Add red food coloring to attain the desired apple red color. (Note: the maple flavoring tints the icing brown. Thus, no matter how much red food coloring you add, you won't achieve a true apple red. If you want the icing to be a bright apple red, and don't much care about the taste, omit the maple flavoring, substitute vanilla, and add red food coloring.)

To decorate the cupcakes, swirl red icing onto the cupcakes and smooth out as much as possible. Insert half a thin pretzel stick into the center of the cupcake to form an apple stem. Top with a halved spearmint leaf (leaving the spearmint leaves whole will make an outsized apple leaf; to get the proportion just right, halve the spearmint leaves horizontally, to remove half the bulk.)

*Baldwin's Table Syrup, to which I am slavishly devoted, comes from Charles H. Baldwin & Sons of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is a delicious combination of maple syrup and cane syrup and I use it a lot in fall baking. If you don't have Baldwin's Table Syrup on hand (what is wrong with you, anyway? you can get it online!) you can substitute with plain old maple syrup. But I really think you should just get some Baldwin's.

After spending time on Saturday with the Front Four of Fall Baking (cinnamon/ apples/ nutmeg/ walnuts) I thought I'd make a more grownup version of a sweet apple dessert. Interestingly, this three-layer cake with its insane, decadent icing utilizes almost all the same ingredients as did the kids' cupcakes, and results in the same delicious comforting flavor profile as the cupcakes, but with a decidedly more grownup end result.

Triple-Layer Apple Cake with Off the Hook Icing

For the cake:

1 lb. cooking apples, peeled, cored and diced

1/4 c. water

2 + 1/2 c. + 1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1 + 1/2 tsp. Saigon cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground mace

1 c. raisins, plumped in brandy

1 c. walnuts, chopped

2 c. granulated sugar

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

1 Tbsp. brandy

1 + 1/2 tsp. Baldwin's vanilla

4 eggs

For the icing:

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

1 c. packed brown sugar

16 oz. cream cheese, room temp

1/2 c. Baldwin's table syrup

1/4 tsp. maple flavoring

1 c. walnuts, chopped

To make the cake: Preheat the oven to 350. Spray three 9" cake pans with Baker's Joy. Combine the apples with the water in a small saucepan and cook, covered, until the apples are tender - about 20 minutes. Remove the apples to a small food processor and puree them until smooth. Place the puree in the refrigerator to cool. (*Note: you could shortcut this step by using unsweetened applesauce, although chopping a few apples really isn't that big of a deal.)

While the apples are cooling, chop the walnuts and set them aside. Sift together all but 1 Tbsp. of the flour, the baking soda, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg and mace. Remove the raisins from the brandy and toss them with the remaining Tbsp. of flour; this step will prevent the raisins from sinking to the bottom of the baking pan, and help distribute them more evenly throughout the cake batter.

In the bowl of your standing mixer, mix the sugar, butter, brandy and vanilla until blended. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add half the flour mixture and all of the apple puree, then follow with the remaining flour mixture. Turn off the mixer and stir in the raisins and walnuts.

Divide the batter among the three pans, and bake until each layer is done, about 25 minutes. During baking be sure to rotate the pans front to back and top to bottom to insure that all three layers are fully done at the same time. (You might need to cover the cakes loosely with foil toward the end of the baking time because the center of the cake layers will be done well after the sides, which will brown.) Remove the layers from the oven, run a knife around the outsides of the layers to help loosen them from the pan, and invert onto wire racks to cool.

Make the icing: Combine all the icing ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer. Chill for at least half an hour before use.

To assemble the cake, frost each layer with icing, then frost the top and sides of the cake. Toss the remaining walnuts onto the top and sides of the cake and chill until firm. Bring the cake back up to room temp before serving.

This is one dense, intense, delicious cake with extremely prevalent tastes of walnut. If you're not overly crazy about walnuts, you could substitute pecans, or omit the nuts altogether. The icing is amazingly decadent and deliciously creamy. Chopped dates would also substitute nicely for the raisins.