Mom's Apple Cake

Can you tell school started again on August 28th? Yep, it's been busy around here. I've had to get more creative with my meal planning since I get home late at least one night a week, but we've still been eating! I have pictures that I have to figure out what recipes coordinate with them, and some I should have finished jotting down the ingredients as I went along. Here's one that I do have a recipe written down for, and pictures!

This is a veganization and slight altering of my mother's apple cake. I only call it my mother's because she used to make it, though she didn't invent the recipe, someone gave it to her. It is VERY sweet and very rich, and also really moist and delicious. To celebrate the beginning of fall, I made the cake with apples, pears, and dried cranberries, whereas Mom's is just apples. All apples is good, and all pears would probably be good too! If you want to use pears, be sure to choose ones that aren't too ripe since they'll just disintegrate.



Mom's Apple Cake
5 cups apples OR 2 1/2 cups each apples and pears; peeled, cored and diced
1/2 cup dried cranberries (optional)
5 tsp sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup crushed pecans or walnuts (I like pecans)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup plain or vanilla soy-yogurt
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup orange juice
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

1. In a large bowl, toss together the fruit, 5 tsp sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. Set aside.

2. In another large bowl (or the mixing bowl to your mixer), beat together sugar, soygurt, vanilla, orange juice and oil.

3. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add to the wet ingredients until combined. Do not overmix.

4. Thoroughly grease and flour a tube pan (you can see I didn't do a good enough job and I couldn't get the cake off the middle!). Layer the cake batter and fruit in the grease pan as follows: batter -> fruit -> batter -> fruit -> batter -> fruit. Try to do about 1/3 of each for each layer. The fruit from the previous layer often peeks through. That's fine.

5. Bake for 90 minutes, but DO NOT open the oven during baking! Let it cool, then fight to remove it from the pan.