APPLE CAKE

On Sunday I mentioned that Jules at Everyday Mommy recently sent me a recipe with this message: "I warn you, it is dangerous. Bake at your own risk." Jules has the most amazing knack of looking at a new recipe and knowing it's going to be delicious. She hasn't steered me wrong yet.

The minute I read this recipe, I knew I was making this Paula Deen cake. I made it Sunday afternoon. I'm telling you, this cake is decadently wonderful, just as Jules said it was. So for those of you who asked me to share:



PAULA DEEN'S APPLE CAKE


Cake:
Butter, for greasing pan
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1/4 cup orange juice
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 cups peeled and finely chopped apples
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup chopped pecans

Sauce:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Generously grease a tube or bundt pan.

For the cake: In a large bowl, combine the sugar, eggs, oil, orange juice, flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and vanilla extract; and mix well. Fold apples, coconut, and pecans into batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a tester comes out clean, about 1 1/2 hours.

Shortly before the cake is done, make the sauce: Melt the butter in a large saucepan, stir in the sugar, buttermilk, and baking soda, and bring to a good rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil for 1 minute. Poke holes in the cake. Pour the sauce over the hot cake IN THE PAN as soon as you remove it from the oven. Let stand 1 hour, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.



These are the only ingredients you might not have on hand. Actually, I usually have apples and orange juice and this time I even had the coconut. Let me tell you, I do NOT normally have buttermilk on hand. Blech. But it's wonderful to cook with. By the way, it only took three of these apples to make 3 cups. But they were fairly large apples.



Get serious when you butter your pan. This cakes really wants to stick to the pan.



I used the usual method of baking to combine the ingredients. I combined the dry ingredients in a separate bowl before I added them to the sugar and wet ingredients.



Look at this wonderfulness! The apples, pecans and coconut are what make this cake to die for.



Be sure you use a large sauce pan to boil the sauce. It really bubbles up. (That's my beef stew in the pot behind it. :-)



Poke a lot of holes all throughout the cake. I used a picker from my nutcracking set. It made nice, big holes and went all the way to the bottom of the cake. A toothpick wouldn't do that because this cake really rises.



You can see that I almost scorched the sauce. Take the "stir constantly" directions seriously. Pour all the sauce on the cake even if it seems like too much. This is a very, very moist cake.



I honestly don't know how to describe how delicious this cake is. The apples make it very moist, as does the sauce, which is almost like a glaze on the outside of the cake and just wonderful on the inside. Rob took one bite of this and said, "You DO plan to make this often, right?" He's having beef stew for dinner tonight. I'm having cake. :-)


ONE QUICK NOTE: So many of you have emailed me and asked me how Rob's doing and how his first physical therapy appointment went today. It's been three weeks today since the surgery so the therapist wasn't too rough with him. He still has to wear the sling. I'm going with him for his next appointment Thursday so the therapist can teach me how to help him with the exercises he has to do at home.

He's doing very, very well but the poor man is just bored to death. He does read a lot and I even let him watch his old black and white John Wayne movies as much as he wants to (or The History Channel). He's not sleeping really well at night because of the sling. But all in all, we're comfortable with his progress.