PrintBaking With Dorie: Ann Brettingen’s Swedish Apple Cake
My friend Sally, she of the garden elves, showed up for a pancake breakfast this weekend bearing gifts: rosemary and bay plants transplanted from my garden into house-size pots and a recipe for her friend Ann Brettingen’s Swedish Apple Cake. According to Sally, the cake was so good she kept poking around in the pan to pick up all the crumbs. It was also so good that she made Ann stop everything and write the recipe down on the back of a napkin, the napkin she came bearing along with the plants.
As soon as I saw the recipe, I smiled—it looked very familiar. In fact, it is almost exactly the same recipe that my friend Ingela Helgesson gave me. Ingela’s recipe, which is in Baking, From My Home to Yours, is called a Swedish Visiting Cake and it’s turned out to be one of the most popular recipes in the book, and with good reason: It’s easy (it comes together in under 10 minutes), foolproof and, most important, great-tasting.
Here are the differences between Ingela’s and Ann’s cakes:
- Ingela’s cake is made in a cast-iron skillet; Ann’s is made in a deep-dish pie plate
- Ingela’s cake has no leavening; Ann’s has some baking powder
- Ingela’s cake is topped with sliced almonds; Ann’s has apple wedges
The measurements for the ingredients are a little different, but not different enough to stop you from imagining that either Ingela and Ann come from the same village or this cake is a national treasure passed down with few changes from mother-to-daughter through generations.
Since I’m not Swedish, I made a few changes in the recipe: I baked it in a cast-iron skillet (I’m a sucker for that rustic look); added a smidgen of vanilla extract and a sprinkle of salt; and glazed the finished cake with a little apple jelly.
If you love the Swedish Visiting Cake, you’ll love this one (or you might just want to add apples to the Visiting Cake); if you don’t know it, you’ll know its cousin when you pull Ann’s cake out of the oven.
Thank you, Ann. Thank you, Sally.
About the author: Dorie Greenspan is the author of several books on dessert, most recently Baking: From My Home to Yours. Dorie can also be found at DorieGreenspan.com and on the Bon Appétit website, where she is a special correspondent.
Ann Brettingen’s Swedish Apple Cake
- makes 6 servings -
Ingredients
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt (optional)
1 extra-large egg or 1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (optional)
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 to 1 1/2 apples (I used Fujis), peeled, cored and cut into 1/2-inch thick wedges
Apple, quince or ginger jelly or preserves, for glazing the cake (optional)
Procedure
1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. (Ann says 345°F, but my oven doesn’t do that.) Generously butter a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate or a similar sized cast-iron skillet.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt, if you’re using it, and keep at hand.
3. Working in a mixing bowl with the whisk, beat the egg(s) and sugar together until thick and pale. Stir in the vanilla, if you’re using it, and then the melted butter. The mixture will be smooth and shiny. Stir in the dry ingredients and scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Top with the apples, making a spiral pattern. Leave some space between each slice, so the batter can puff up between the wedges – it looks much nicer with the puffs.
4. Slide the pan into the oven and bake for about 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a cooling rack.
5. If you want to glaze the cake, warm a few spoonfuls of jelly and a splash of water in a microwave oven (or a saucepan) until the jelly liquefies. Brush the jelly over the hot cake.
6. Let the cake cool for at least 15 minutes, or wait until it reaches room temperature, before you cut it into wedges to serve.
Storing: Cooled and covered, the cake will keep overnight at room temperature, but it’s best served shortly after it’s baked.
View other entries from Baking with Dorie.
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6 Comments:
I make a great Apple Cake w/Crackly Meringue (Torta di Mels) .It's awesome! Will have to compare these two.
bvstarr at 2:14PM on 11/29/07
This is a welcome recipe after all the Thanksgiving eats--thanksI I'm thinking some vanilla Haagen-Dazs would taste good with it, too.
JEP at 6:21PM on 11/29/07
This recipe is so similar to my German Versunkener Apfelkuchen, that I had to tell you! The major difference is the apple preparation: my apples are cut into either 6ths or 8ths, depending on the size, then the rounded backs are scored about 1/4 of the way through 3 or 4 times (imagine an oval scored lengthwise). They are placed cored side down on the batter (scored side up, IOW), and sprinkled with sugar mixed with a little cinnamon and a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg. Then the cake is baked, and when it comes out of the oven it can be glazed as you suggest, or the apples lightly buttered while hot. The apple slices open up as they bake, most appealingly. I just call the melted sugar the glaze, and skip the melting of the butter or jelly... I serve it mit schlag - whipped cream. This is the common quick cake in the Pfaltzer community I lived in for 3 years, sort of the equivalent of our "Wacky Cake".
dksbook at 7:44PM on 11/29/07
sigh.... this WOULD have been delicious had my roomate NOT been asking me a thousand of questions and had I NOT forgotten sugar...sigh...
bisbee at 8:48PM on 11/29/07
bvstarr - I like the idea of crackly meringue. This cake is so simple in every way that I think it could become the base for lots of variations from toppings, to spices, to fruits, to ...
jep - is there anything that ice cream doesn't make deliciouser?
dksbook - thank you for taking the time to explain the Apfelkuchen. The way the apples are cut reminded me immediately of the way my grandmother would top a cake -- a kuchen -- that she used to make in a springform pan. It had been such a long time since I'd thought of it. These cakes are so much fun because there is so much you can do with them and they easily lend themselves to borrowings from other favorite cakes. Again, my thanks.
bisbee -- poor you! I know the problem well. If I talk on the phone while I'm measuring or mixing, I can almost guarantee that there'll be something left on the counter after the cake's already gone into the oven. It's soooooo frustrating!
dorie at 8:58AM on 11/30/07
Lovely! I've been making a similar Swedish apple cake since I was a child, from a recipe given to my mother by a friend. The proportions of mine are different -- the same 1 stick of sweet butter and 1 egg, but only half a cup of sugar and a whole cup of flour. I added a pinch of salt and vanilla to the recipe. The dough is spread in a pie plate or tart ring, covered with 3 or 4 apples worth of slices, then sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and baked until the dough is golden brown and the apples are tender. It's been a family favorite for years. These simple cakes made with good ingredients are so often the most delicious!
Julie at 12:06AM on 12/01/07