Apple Pie Cake

Yes, MORE comfort food!  (Apparently I am in need of a lot of comfort these days).  Everybody loves apple pie, well, most everyone except maybe me, but I love cake, so here is a tasty twist on an American classic that will give everyone a warm belly feeling and make your kitchen smelled DEE-licious.

Apple Pie Cake

1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 eggs
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

In a medium bowl, mix all the dry ingredients.

Add in the eggs and melted butter and mix well.  The batter will have a consistency that's less like a cake batter and more like a really moist, gritty cookie dough.

Core, peel and thick-slice your Granny Smith apple.  I cut mine into 1/4" slices and then cut the slices in half, gives you a better apple-to-batter ratio when you spread it in the pan.

Gently fold the apple slices and walnuts into the batter.

Spread the batter in an 8x8" greased baking pan.  And yes, for the record, spreading slippery dough-batter in a greased pan is not unlike running on ice in shoes -- it's going to go everywhere and nowhere that you want it to, but if you remain calm and be patient, it will work out.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.  Remove and allow to cool before tearing into and devouring the pan. Not saying I did, but somehow a third of it mysteriously disappeared after photographing it.

NOTES

One sliced Granny Smith apple will measure anywhere between 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 cups.  I've put up to 2 cups worth in and it the recipe still works fine.

When you melt your butter, you want it to have a creamy yellow color/consistency.  From experience, the recipe doesn't work if your butter gets separated (has a clear yellow layer). I usually heat mine in the microwave for 15 seconds (for room temp butter), let it sit in there another 5 seconds and then whisk it with a fork to blend the non-melted parts in.  If it doesn't de-lump completely, then microwave it for another 5-7 seconds and that should do the trick.

The thing I like about this cake is that the sugar in the mix bakes into a nice crispy crust on the top of it so it's crunchy on the outside and soft and moist and cinnamony-appleicious in the center.

If you want to change it up a bit, in the summer you can use peaches slices instead of apple.  To get the best slices for baking, you want to use a softly firm fresh peach, somewhere between hard and crunchy (like I like mine) and juicy squiggy.