Recipes/Apple cake

Nominally an apple cake, that through three attempts to make, has yielded no consistent results at all beyond edibility and unexpected tastiness (but never in the same way). Recipe was imprecisely recorded after the fact the first time after unexpectedly acceptable result despite use of a broken oven and just whatever ingredients we actually had on hand.

Original recipe, maybe, is below. See notes.

Ingredients

• 1-2 apples (5-6 is better)
• 1 banana (unnecessary, but we wanted to get rid of it)
• 350 g butter
• 1 dl orange juice (or ideally an orange or two)

• 1 dl fructose (optional especially if you're putting in a lot apples/juice anyway, can also just use more regular sugar instead if needed)
• 2 dl sugar
• 50 ml maple sugar (or brown sugar) + a bit more to dust on top at end
• 3 dl flour (or maybe twice that? unclear, too much incompetence, someone else who can actually use a measuring cup needs to test this)
• 2-5 black peppercorns
• 3-6 sweet peppercorns (allspice)
• 1-2 cloves
• 2 ml vanilla sugar
• 3 ml baking powder
• 1 ml baking soda (should probably be more like 5ml baking soda, baking powder optional)

Later additions:

• 2-4 eggs (optional?)
• 4 cardamoms
• 0.5-1 ml ground cinnamon
• orange zest (lemon also works)
• Extra apple or orange juice as needed if too dry (how do you tell? no idea, but if it is too dry, instead of keeping the cake moist, the sugar will turn the entire thing brown inside like burnt gingerbread, teetering on a very fine line between still tasty and absolute bleh)

Process

Heat oven to ~200C (maybe higher, unless it burns). Grease (and flour, if not nonstick) baking pan(s).

Mash/grind whole spices, zest orange (if applicable), peel and dice apple(s). Mash in banana, mix in butter. Whisk together dry ingredients, then mix with wet when oven is ready, and pour/push into pan(s). Bake until done but not burnt; cake should no longer jiggle when tapped or stick when stabbed. (Timing depends on pans, temperatures, and how badly the measurements were messed up; anything from 15 minutes to an hour so far.)

Dust with maple sugar if possible. Sop up excess butter leakage if necessary. Re-evaluate all of the above as needed, because this ain't right. Cakes should not squelch. Etc.

Notes

First attempt

Based loosely on zucchini bread (fruit quickbread cake)/pound cake proportions, but not recorded until after. Resulted in a surprisingly subtle golden cake that was browned on the outside and light and moist on the inside, and flaked apart easily while still generally holding shape in the meantime if cut with at least some amount of care.

Some notes:

• Only had one apple and one banana and an orange juicebox, so kept spice amounts down accordingly, hence amount range on spices.
• Could probably have used more rising agent, as it did not rise much at all.
• No eggs were used as we never bothered to buy any. Apparently not necessary.
• Smaller flat cake took ~15 minutes to bake, larger bundt ~45, at a temperature somewhere around 200C; unclear due to broken oven.
• Flour and sugar amounts may have been double what was recorded due to misremembering sizes of measuring cups, or not. Made sense at the time.

Second attempt

Involved what turned out to be an impressively blatant failure to convert to SAE (american 'cups' are, apparently, quite large), resulting in much higher dry ingredient amounts than intended. Adding more spices meant there was still plenty of flavour, but neglecting to add more water or juice (added more butter and eggs instead) resulted in a cake caramelised (browned) all the way through that dried out somewhat quickly. Apparently we made a spice cake? Still surprisingly good, especially with some cream and/or vanilla sauce poured over it.

Notes:

• Spice amounts doubled; also added cardamoms and cinnamon now that we had them.
• Skipped the baking powder (either because we forgot to get any, or it just seemed pointless with the oranges); used 5 spoons of soda instead, resulting in significantly more rise.
• Used 4-5 eggs, may have been more important with more rising agent, or not.
• Thoroughly browned cake was probably due to too much flour and possibly other primary dry ingredients without adding more actual water, as sugars (especially fructose) will caramelise at lower temperatures than this when not buffered by water. Apparently. Definitely used too much flour, though. (Maybe 3 cups flour? lololol)

Third attempt

Resulted in a 'cake' seeping grease from every crevice that squelched when removed from pans or plates. A cake should not squelch. Remarkably good regardless, but calling this one a 'cake' just seems wrong somehow. More like a weird stacked baked pudding, if anything. Still not entirely sure what happened.

Notes:

• Should have had way more flour. Possible explanations include mis-recording initial target (may have been 2dL measuring cups instead of 1dL or something), just plain mismeasuring this time (may have forgotten second scoop or misread units on current measuring cup), or just that throwing in six apples in a two-apple recipe has... consequences. Possibly all of the above.
• Used 6 apples, because apples are delicious. May explain need for extra flour, may also explain why if measurements of both were way off already, only the flour deficit would have stood out (apples provide their own sugar, so flavour was still fine). Does not sufficiently explain why flour deficit seemed so extreme.
• Added extra apple juice out of paranoia to avoid a second fully-caramelised cake; probably made insufficient flour issue even worse, but still doesn't seem to sufficiently explain the deficit. Just not enough flour. Nowhere near enough, probably not by an order of magnitude, but still a lot.
• Probably only used 2 eggs due to getting fed up with having to pick egg shells back out of it.
• Couldn't find baking soda, so tried to just use extra baking powder, but then misread and wound up with default amount. Should probably definitely be more when using only mixed powder, as baking powder is less soda to begin with and the oranges still would have covered the acid part, though in this case it likely didn't matter due to lack of flour.
• When removed from oven, cakes were essentially boiling in butter, which then seeped out from all sides. Placed cakes on plates lined with paper towels to out-grease as we would for fried foods, at which point the squelching began. No further outgreasing followed once cooled, nor unpleasant coagulation, but the squelching continued whenever a piece was removed from a surface.

Miscellaneous

• Again, cakes should not squelch.
• Sugar is what makes cakes moist, because it holds onto water. Flour holds onto oil, which also helps as it acts as a buffer to slow down the sugar drying out, but without sugar and water in some form (say, apples), you cannot make a moist cake. Stop trying to pass off rocks as cake, health nuts. Use more apples or something. Or don't cake.
• Water is what keeps sugar from caramelising, as dissolved sugar requires a far higher temperature to do so than dry. Cakes brown on the outside when the water evaporates regardless due to surface contact, or something.
• Different kinds of sugars hold onto water differently, dissolve differently, and caramelise at different temperatures. Fructose appears to hold more water, but also requires more to not caramelise, as its default is a lower temperature. When in doubt, add more fruit, as it's usually an already well-balanced solution, and also delicious.
• Starting to wonder if maybe I do know how to cook, considering how badly this keeps going while still turning out okay.