Martha Stewart's Apple Cake
happy baking season
I know what you’re thinking. “Meredith, you said summer was until September 21st”. I know, I know. But I can’t fight this feeling any more! I’m longing for crisp mornings and hot apple cider, for sweaters and boots, for football Sundays, for dare I say.. baking! Yes, you read that correctly. I, the chef who famously despises baking, has dusted off her kitchen aid mixer after a year of retirement. You may be wondering what triggered this bizarre episode. It’s a combination of starting recipe testing for Thanksgiving, watching far too many vintage Martha Stewart episodes, and Prozac. We can unpack that at a later date.
My first order of business is the apple cake recipe that you will find below, adapted from one of the aforementioned Martha Stewart episodes. The episode that I pulled this from first aired in 1997. It was *apple week* in the Martha Stewart Living studio and she whipped together what sounded like the most delicious apple-forward snacking cake that my apple-loving heart could only dream of. To my misfortune, the recipe for this cake was never published online, only in her magazine. While I have a small collection of old MSL magazines, I didn’t have this particular issue. So I went the old-fashioned route and TOOK NOTES during the episode. Cue the memes of Amish women churning butter. I then used said notes to bake the cake and against all odds, it turned out fantastic. Lucky for you, I’m sharing the recipe and my notes with you today so you can save yourself the trouble of watching the episode back 4 times like I did.
Martha Stewart’s Apple Cake
For the cake:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter plus 1 tablespoon, room temp
2 cups granulated sugar
2½ cups applesauce (homemade instructions below, or sub with store bought)
2¾ cups all purpose flour, plus more for coating the pan
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
¼ tsp of salt
1¾ tsp baking powder
1 cup toasted and chopped pecans
2 tbsp Calvados apple brandy, or sub with apple cider
1 large apple, peeled and very thinly sliced
For the crumb topping:
3 tbsp butter, chilled and cubed
3 tbsp flour
½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
¼ cup light brown sugar