A certain little sous chef is celebrating a birthday today, and in true like mother – like daughter fashion, she is not a fan of birthday cake. Too sweet, sticky, frostingy – not really sure why but we’re not super big cake people. So when she asked me last year for an apple fruit cake I was more than happy to try it out. I found a recipe for French Apple Cake at Once Upon a Chef and it is fabulous.  A perfect rendition that takes me back to my study abroad days in Provence. Le sigh….

This time around we are visiting my parents and for whatever reason my Mom doesn’t have a traditional mixer – so I used an immersion blender – which was interesting since the butter was more runny than anything but I have high hopes. The cake cooked up beautifully and from the few pieces that fell off when I took it from pan to plate the taste was impeccable.

I had to improvise a few other things but again – I have high hopes my little sous chef will be very happy with her non-birthday, birthday cake.

Click on the link above for the original Once Upon a Chef recipe and below is my version without access to my own kitchen and baking gear.

Recipe

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 2 apples peeled, cored and diced
• 2/3 cup of sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 stick of salted butter – room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla (you can also sub in maple syrup if you don’t have vanilla – which I was very close to doing but my Mom’s friend saved the day)
• 3 tbsp spiced rum
• 2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350.

Measure out all the dry ingredients and whisk together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. I had to use an immersion blender for this step – and the mixture was runny and weird-looking but cooked up just fine. Add in each egg one at a time and mix together. Finally, add the rum and vanilla.

Combine wet and dry ingredients and gentle fold in the apples until just combined.

Pour into a well-greased 9″ round cake pan and bake for 40 minutes. Tip – if you’re using a convection oven it will cook in about 20 minutes. Thankfully my Mom asked me to check it because it smelled so good. Note to self – when heating up an oven that is not yours – double-check that you don’t set it on convection unintentionally.

Bon Appetit!