Apple Crumble Cake

   I'm making up for lost time.

 I made this Apple Crumble Cake a while ago and I loved, loved, loved it. In fact, I made it three times. It has entered my 10 top favourite cakes (I don't have an actual list though). Yeah. There are still some apples on the counter and I only refrained from making a fourth for fear my family will  throw them at my head (well, they wouldn't do that to food, but I shouldn't bore them with the same thing over and over again anyway).

Aren't they beautiful?
I wish apples grew here in Malaysia. That way I could plant one right outside my bedroom window.

   We had some apples browning in the fridge, so I wanted to bake something with apples. You cannot imagine (or perhaps you ca) how mind-boggling it is to choose a recipe! I took two days over it. 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an apple corer.
Useful for, uhm, coring apples.
It's lost. Mum said I may have thrown it away with the apple skins
Somebody please knock some sense into me.

   And the apples kept browning. I finally choose this recipe because:

   1. It's from The Caked Crusader's blog, hehe, so what's not to love?
   2. It was baked and loved by a superhero, so what can an adoring fan do but make one too? 
   3. It has a crumble topping. I've always wanted to make a crumble cake ever since I found out about them, so this is one thing ticked off my wishlist. The topping also has cinnamon- I love cinnamon! Wait, should that be reason number 4?
   4. CC's introductory words about them. I quote: "This could be just about the best cake in the world. It’s more than a cake, sort of a cake/dessert hybrid – and if I haven’t caught your attention with a statement like that, then what are you doing on this site in the first place?"
   5. I was attracted to the step which involves whisking the eggs and sugar until it 'soufflés up' to 4 or 5 times its size. I love steps that involve whisking sugar and eggs. It's divine!
   6. It involves melted butter. I have no idea why this is a reason, since I didn't even use pure butter. Whoops.

   I also took down some notes while making the first cake, so I'll put them here. Hopefully they'll be useful in the future when I make them again.

   1. You're supposed to whisk the eggs and sugar using an electric mixer, because it'll take at least 10 minutes for the mixture to get to 4 or 5 times its original volume. I used a handheld electric mixer, and it took me nearly 25 minutes (with 4 or 5 30-second breaks in between). My hand got really stiff, and I was afraid the motor would heat up too much and blow up, but it didn't and the end result was worth it. I was right about reason number 5. 

   2. After the batter was ready, I started preparing  the apples, before which the batter was quite runny, like CC said it would be. When I was ready to pour the batter into the pan, discovered that it had thickened up, and even had bubbles which reminded me of a yeasted (if that is even a word) dough. I'm not sure if this was supposed to happen, but I poured into the pan and arranged the apples on top.
   3. (The cake is now out from the oven) I baked the cake at 175C. It's supposed to be baked for about 1.5 hours. At the 30th minute, I thought the top already looked nice and brown, and since I was afraid of burning it and there was still along way to go, I reduced the temperature to 150C. At the 45th minute, the cake looked ready and had even over-browned. I held myself from checking since there was still at least 0.5 hours to go. However, I checked it after another 10 minutes and no crumbs stuck to the knife I inserted. I think it was actually ready at the 40th minute. I wonder why, but after thinking about it, I think it was because the batter that went into the pan wasn't quite runny, and in fact I didn't have any trouble arranging the apples on top or worry that they would sink into the cake. So I suppose a runnier batter calls for a longer cooking time? (shrugs).

I'm looking for a way to make sure the  inside gets cooked without  overbaking the outer part of the cake. 

   Serve the cake with some lovely homemade Devonshire cream.

   [Click HERE for original recipe]

   Thank you CC, for such a lovely recipe! I've yet to produce a truly satisfying cake (which hereby refers to a cake that is both fully cooked inside without being overbaked on the outside- so far I've only managed either one), but so far the ones I've made have been gulped down so fast I wonder I wasn't sick!