Saturday is Baking day!

One of my best friends, Rachael & I have been cooking up and trying new recipes for the last several Saturday’s, I think I have posted about most of them so far.  Today I’m flying solo because I’ve had a crazy week taking care of my other bestie, Crissy (she’s been really sick) and I needed some downtime.  But!  I also really wanted to try this 3-Ingredient Apple cake recipe I saw someplace on Pinterest.  Who knew Pinterest would turn into this huge recipe-mecca?!  I love it!

Here is the recipe for the Apple Crumble Cake and, if you know me at all, You know I kind of ‘made it my own’ because I never follow recipes to the letter anyway  

You will need:

Baking pan (pyrex, pie plate or even a toss away pan)

1 Box of yellow cake mix (Pillsbury was just on sale at Shop Rite for $0.79 a box!)

6-8 apples (I would avg. 1 apple for each person who might be having cake – I used 6 macintosh apples because I had them sitting around and they were starting to get a little beat up. Rather than tossing them out, why not cook ‘em up?)

1 stick of salted butter (I know, I know – don’t judge me!)

Those are the 3 (main) ingredients. I think a lot of folks who pride themselves on recipes with just a few items from your pantry assume that you’ll already have things like cinnamon, honey, salt, pepper, and lots of other seasonings. Some folks don’t have those things on hand!  But I can honestly say, this recipe is just the 3 ingredients listed above.  I ‘made it my own’ by adding a little lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla.

This recipe takes about 10 minutes to prepare and a total of about an hour to make including baking time.

Directions:

Pre heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Peel and core your apples, then slice and rough chop into bite size pieces (or larger or smaller if you wish).

(If you don’t have the extra ingredients or don’t want to do the extra steps, feel free to skip to the next step!)  I put mine in a bowl, sprinkled some lemon juice over top and gave them a good stir so while I was doing other things my apples wouldn’t turn brown. Besides, I think a little citrus is good for (some) desserts, it brightens things and cuts the sweetness just a bit.  I added about 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract.  Then I tossed the apples again in the bowl to be sure they were coated.

Now you can dump the apples into whatever baking pan you are using (I don’t like to do dishes, so I used a toss away pan!)  Be sure to evenly distribute the apples to cover the bottom of the pan.  I then poured the powdered cake mix evenly over the apples.

 

 

 

I put a stick of butter in another bowl and stuck it in the microwave for about 45-50 seconds to melt it.  I added a few more sprinkles of cinnamon to the butter, gave it a stir and poured it over the cake mixture. 

You probably wont be able to coat and wet ALL of the powdered mix but that’s okay. You can hand-moisten the powdered cake mix with a tiny bit of water using a teaspoon but it’s honestly not even necessary.

Bake the cake in the oven for 35-40 minutes.

 

You can serve this warm with a scoop of vanilla or just on its own, it’s moist and delicious!

Here is something I would probably do different if I make this again:  I would use some extra butter (maybe 1-2 tablespoons) in a bowl and mix it with some sort of crushed nuts and some rolled oats and put that on top of the powdered mix before the other stick of butter the recipe calls for. This cake is very yummy, but for my personal taste, I think it needs some added texture to it.  On 2nd thought, I’d add some of that crunchy/nut/oats mixture down in the pan before putting the apples in as well, a little bite before and after the warm apple sweetness would be just perfect!

The true beauty of this recipe is that it’s so universal!  You can substitute apples with just about any fresh fruit, frozen berries or even a can of pumpkin! (that’ll probably be my next try!) 

That’s all for now folks – I hope you’ll give this easy recipe a try. Everybody likes different tastes and textures, so If you’re making your own edits – please share, I’d love to know!  Enjoy your weekend before Hurricane Sandy comes to town and STAY SAFE!

xoxo,

Aimee