Last Summer Tuesday - Honey Apple Cake

Tomorrow, besides being the last summer Wednesday of 2017 for us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the start (at sundown) of the Jewish New Year.

Two of the traditional foods for this happy occasion are apples and honey.

Both apples and honey are produced locally in my area of upstate New York.  So, I like to combine the two every year.  I have a favorite apple honey cake recipe I'd like to share with you.

It isn't my recipe but I have adopted it as "mine". Sort of.

I made it slightly differently from last year.  Here is this year's recipe.

AM's 2017 Version of Tori Avey's Apple Honey Cake

3 large eggs (I was fortunate enough to use free range brown eggs from a local farm)
3/4 cup honey (local buckwheat honey from the Finger Lakes, which is quite dark, and is a good fall honey)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup unrefined coconut oil melted gently in microwave (this is solid at room temperature) mixed with 1/4 cup canola oil.
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 cups King Arthur's White Whole Wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon, freshly ground
3/4 tsp Penzey's pie spice
4 apples, peeled, cored and shredded (you will also want to use the resulting liquid)

Here, you get an idea of how dark buckwheat honey is

 I had local ginger gold apples in the house, and also a pippin apple I had never eaten from the local farmers market called Saint Edmund's Pippin.  This is actually more of a cider and fresh eating apple, but it's what I had.

You will bake this in a 9 inch Bundt cake pan.

Method (sorry, not metric)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

While oven heats, mix the wet ingredients:
In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs until frothy.
Whisk in honey, white and brown sugar, melted coconut oil, and vanilla

Then mix the dry ingredients:
In a smaller bowl, sift together flour, baking power, baking soda, spices.

Gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, stir to blend.  You don't want any dry ingredients, but you also don't want to over beat.

Fold in your shredded apples and liquid from the apples.

Spray your bundt pan with cooking spray, coating the inside evenly.

Now, pour your batter into the pan.  You don't want to overfill (Tory Avery, who wrote the original recipe, warns you not to fill more than 3/4 full.)  Smooth the batter on the top so that it is flat and even.  You do not want any air pockets.  I press down on the filling gently with a spoonula.

Bake for approximately 75-90 minutes.  When the edges darken and pull fully away from the sides of the pan, and the cake is browned, test with a toothpick.  This is a moist cake, so you don't want to under cook.  But, you don't want to overcook it, either.

All done - wonderfully dark (not burned)

I don't put a frosting on this although the original recipe calls for one.

In the mood for more apple recipes? Check this blog out.

Do you have a favorite apple recipe?