Apple Upside-down Apple Butter Apple Cake of Apples

Apple crumble. Apple cobbler. Apple butter. Apple jelly. Apple pie. Apple cider. Apple butter waffles. Apple apple apple. What a strange looking word. I find if I say (or write) a word enough times I can return to a state of mind where it is strange to me again. It’s like I am meeting apple for the first time, and feeling that it does not really suit the fruit it signifies.

We have been inundated with apples since September. RRTT’s mom and pops have an old MacIntosh apple tree and we picked them all. There are finally only about 10 or so apples left, and all of the above apple products have been resorted to in dealing with them. The appliest apple moment of this apple mania was when I apple-upside-downed this recipe for apple butter bundt cake, resulting in the Apple Upside-down Apple Butter Apple Cake of Apples.

I came across the recipe for apple butter bundt cake in the spring when I was trying to find a way to use up my apple butter from the previous summer. It resulted in the most hideous looking monster of a cake that luckily tasted quite good, and was lovely and moist and soft. Very soft. I brought it, still in the bundt pan, to a family dinner at my parents’ house. I turned it upside down to remove it from the pan and it did not come. I put a warm wet cloth on the outside of the bundt pan to loosen it from the pan gently (a trick of my mama’s). My youngest brother swaggered in and hit it with a thwack. The bottom half of my cake came out of the pan. The hideous cake that followed was as a result of numerous suggestions from the peanut gallery that went like this: “Stick it back together with jam and whipped cream…cover up the broken parts with a glaze…ewwww cover up the glaze with icing sugar…” it just went on and on. The cake was too heavy to have a layer of whipped cream in the middle. It just oozed out the side under the weight of the top layer, and my glaze was an awful improvised mixture of plum jam and icing sugar and too much water. And I didn’t have a sieve to sprinkle the icing sugar nicely…bad bad bad. By the time it was done I could not stop laughing.

Much love for the most hideous cake I’ve ever made.

This time I decided to abandon the bundt cake pan and use up more apples. If you don’t already have some nice homemade apple butter, check out the post for it. It is very easy and yummy, great for baking with, great for spreading on toast, or using to make your own bbq sauce for pork.

Apple Upside-down Apple Butter Apple Cake of Apples

*cake adapted from this recipe for Apple Bundt Cake on a funny blog called eggton

Upside-down apples:

3 apples
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/3 c brown sugar
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla

Cake:

3 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 c. butter (at room temperature)
1 1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1/3 c. honey
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2 c. apple butter

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Upside down apples:

Peel, core and slice the apples. Arrange them in the bottom of a 9 x 13″ greased pan. Sprinkle with lemon juice.

Melt butter in a small pot. Add brown sugar and vanilla and stir over medium heat until dissolved. Drizzle evenly over the apples in the pan.

Cake:

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl (flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon).

Beat butter with brown sugar until fluffy. Add honey and vanilla. Beat. Add eggs. Beat. Stir in apple butter (don’t beat or it will schlop everywhere).

Add dry ingredients to your wet ones. Stir until mixed. Pour into the greased pan on top of your apples and brown sugar mixture.

Bake until a toothpick comes out of the middle of the cake clean (about 45-60 min). Allow the cake to cool in the pan. Then loosen the sides of the cake and turn it upside down on a plate so that the apples are on top and the caramel oozes into the cake.