Jewish Apple Cake Recipe

Just out of the oven ...

You can blame Pinterest.  I've started pinning recipes like a woman possessed, and this Jewish Apple Cake was one that took my eye immediately.  We're right in the middle of apple season here in my little part of Germany and the trees are groaning with fruit in the orchards - and I love apple cake, so it's a win win.

Of course, me being me, I didn't follow the recipe to the letter.  Where's the fun in that?  I'll make my comments in italics as we work through the recipe.  Here we go:-

Jewish Apple Cake

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour (all purpose/plain)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 cups white sugar (I used one cup of white and one cup of brown - mainly because I like the toffee taste that brown sugar gives in fruity cakes, and also because I had a sad little bag of brown sugar sitting in the pantry that had about a cup left in it)
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs beaten
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 apples peeled, cored and sliced (I don't have a corer, so I used my mandolin and just sliced them thinly around the edges of the core.  Don't know why I don't have a corer, it's a mystery ...)
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 5 teaspoons white sugar (I only used two teaspoons of white sugar, and two teaspoons each of this vanilla sugary stuff I bought in a supermarket in Paris years ago because I liked the tin it came in.  I'm mad for interesting looking tins of ingredients in foreign supermarkets - then I have to figure out what's actually inside.  In this case, I think (hope?) it's vanilla sugar.)

See?  How could I not buy that cute tin?  Really hope it's vanilla sugar .
Not the pink stuff - I'm pretty sure the pink stuff is NOT vanilla sugar,
but the problem is that I don't know what it actually is.  Any ideas?

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F or 175C
• Grease and flour one 10 inch tube pan (not sure that that is, I have a bundt pan, so I used that)
• Combine the ground cinnamon and 5 teaspoons of the sugar together and set aside

My mix of odd sugars and cinnamon looked like this.

• In large mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder and 2 cups of sugar
• Stir in the vegetable oil, beaten eggs, orange juice and vanilla

This is how vanilla extract comes in Germany.
Each little glass tube contains one teaspoon.

• Mix well
• Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan
• Top with half of the sliced apples

What it looks like after the first layer.

• Sprinkle with half of the cinnamon/sugar mix
• Pour the remaining batter over the top
• Layer the remaining apples over the top
• Sprinkle with the last of the cinnamon/sugar mix
• Bake at 350/175 for 70-90 minutes (our oven is old and dodgy and it looked done after 60 minutes, so I turned it down to 150 and gave it an extra 5 minutes to be sure - keep an eye on it after an hour)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!  Yum.