Apple Cake with Cinnamon Sugar Topping and Cake Angels

Listen closely….do you hear it? Sure you do, it’s the music of the cake angels singing as they cast their morning light of joy upon this delicious breakfast cake.

I couldn’t wait to make this one for you. We had it once before on a lazy Sunday morning and got rave reviews from the Cookbook Apprentice crew. This recipe is so crazy easy and you’ll be sure to put a can of apple pie filling in your shopping cart the next time you’re at the grocery store. I for one will never be without the stuff now that I’ve experienced this breakfast bliss. With one go around of the can opener, a world of moist, apple filled, cakiness will be yours and you won’t be able to turn back to life as you knew it before.

This is another winner of a recipe from Allysa Torey’s book More from Magnolia – Recipes from the World Famous Bakery and Allysa Torey’s Home Kitchen. While it’s considered a breakfast cake, I’m up for pairing it with a big scoop of ice cream and calling it dessert.

Here’s what you need:

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup vegetable oil (preferably canola)

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

One 20-ounce can sliced apples, drained and patted dry

1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Here’s what you do:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Grease and lightly flour a 10-inch tube pan.

In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat together the oil, sugar and eggs until light and thick, about 3 minutes.

Tangent time. Sometimes when I’m baking I look at my ingredients the way I look at cloud formations.

Like here:

When I looked at this I immediately saw the face of a frog. See? The yolks are the eyes…

And here:

That’s when the pumpkin turns into a coach in Cinderella! Right?

OK, tangent time is over.

Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla, beating after each addition until smooth.

Next in a separate small bowl, toss the apples with half the cinnamon-sugar mixture. By the way, I played with the recipe a bit. Alyssa says to used sliced, canned apples, drained and patted dry. I went with apple pie filling, since I didn’t know of any other canned, sliced apples. Also, I didn’t drain or pat them dry. I went the full nine yards because I wanted to see if I’d get a pie-ish, pudding-ish result within the cake (yum, I did). I’ll try it the original way next time to compare.

Shane and the others were very disappointed.

Whenever they hear the can opener, they think it’s time for some canine cuisine. You know, Pavlov and all that.

Then stir half the apples into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Drop the remaining apples on top of the batter and sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon sugar.

Bake for 60 – 70 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for one hour, then remove from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes one 10-inch cake

And….voila!

Here. Try some.

Just a bite though, you don’t have time for more. You have things to do right now, like to go buy the apples and make your own.