Apple pudding cake with butter caramel rum sauce recipe

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A few months back, I had a craving for a memory - a decadently moist pudding cake studded with cinnamon sugar coated apple pieces throughout.  And I wasn't going to stop experimenting in the kitchen until I nipped the craving in the bud.  So, every few weeks I'd bake up a Jewish apple pudding cake, apple bread puddings, caramel apple bread puddings, apple coffee cakes... and with lots of tweaks, piles of apple peelings, lots of happy taste testing friends and the aroma of apple cinnamon goodness permeating my house... lets get on to baking up Apple pudding cake version 5.01 with a scratch butter caramel rum sauce! And yes, this recipe will blow your socks off :)

Traditional layered apple pudding cake recipes scrounged up from gramma's recipe books typically have layers of cinnamon dusted apple pieces sandwiched between cake layers and baked in either bunt or angel food cake pans.  I found as a common complaint (and in the kitchen) that while the layers are pretty, trying to up the amount of apples or if your pan was just a bit too small for the recipe... resulted in molten burnt sugar apple blackened goop in the oven (and I HATE cleaning my oven easy/steam clean or no).  So, I cheated. I simply mixed all the darn ingredients together at the end and not only increased the # of cups of apples I could cram into the cake - I didn't have to deal with the idiotic mess in the oven if the cake batter decided to escape.

I baked my cakes in a silicone pan (HIC Brands that Cook Essentials Silicone Deep Fluted Pan).. which made for an odd muffin top like cake, but luckily looked great when I flipped it over

Oh, and I love scratch butter caramel, so to balance out the healthiness of the apple cake, well, there's nothing really a scratch butter caramel rum sauce doesn't taste good on!  I used a handy glass cake stand to keep things pretty!

Ingredients

-8 med sized apples (I used ones from my tree out back, Macintoshes, Granny Smiths, Gala) or if you're crazy about measuring: 10 cups of apples - peeled and diced into 1/4 inch pieces

-1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

-5 tablespoons brown sugar

-2 3/4 cups flour, sifted

-1 tablespoon baking powder

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1/2 cup vegetable oil

-1/2 cup sour cream (use full fat - tastes better!)

-1 cup sugar

-3/4 cups brown sugar

-1/4 cup orange or apple juice

-1 tablespoon orange zest

-3 teaspoons vanilla

-4 large eggs, beaten

-1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

-1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

How to:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a large bundt, tube or angel food cake pan.  You can skip the oil if you're using a silicone pan. Peel, core and chop apples into 1/4 inch chunks (the smaller the apple pieces the wetter/moister your cake). Toss with 1Tbsp cinnamon and 5Tbsp sugar in a large bowl and set aside.

2) Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, sour cream, orange juice, remaining sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, mixing well - the dough will be quite thick.

3) Add the seasoned apple pieces into the batter, mix well to incorporate. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a tester comes out clean.

Butter Caramel Rum sauce

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup cream or evaporated milk (higher the milk fat=richer it tastes... I use whipping cream)

-1-2 Tbsp or splash of whiskey, rum or bourbon (I used a 50yr old rum which was fantastic!)

1) Melt butter, cream and sugar in a medium non-reactive nonstick sauce pot over medium-high heat, stirring frequently

2) Turn down heat to medium and let mixture gently boil for 15-20minutes until caramel sauce is reduced and coats the back of a spoon - the longer you cook it, the thicker the caramel sauce

3) Take sauce off heat and add in a splash or two of rum and mix in.  Be careful as the sauce will boil up quickly when the alcohol is added.  Add in alcohol always at the end, so it won't curdle the cream/milk product - lumpy caramel sauce is not cool!