Apple Butter Spice Cake

Circle B Kitchen

This is a beautiful fall cake that's wonderful all winter long too. Sort of gingerbread meets apple cake. You can use homemade apple butter or any good store-bought kind. I've given you a link to my recipe below. Any good baking apple will work in this. I used a jonagold. And for the icing, you can certainly use all cream or milk and leave out the rum, but we loved the rum flavor with the apples.

1 cup apple butter (here's my recipe)

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/3 cup molasses

1/4 cup canola oil

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 large apple (see headnote), peeled, seeded and diced

1 cup raisins

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Icing:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon cream or milk

1 1/2 tablespoons rum

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Lightly oil a 10-inch bundt pan.

In a large bowl, whisk together the apple butter, buttermilk, molasses, oil, egg and vanilla.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, baking soda and salt. Break up any lumps of brown sugar with your fingertips.

Stir the dry ingredients into the apple butter mixture just until well combined. Stir in the chopped apples and raisins.

Using a rubber spatula, scrape the batter into the prepared baking dish, smoothing the top. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. (Mine was done in exactly 30 minutes).

Let cool in the pan on a rack for a few minutes and then turn out to cool completely on a rack before icing.

Using a small whisk, stir together the powdered sugar, milk and rum. After the cake has cooled completely, drizzle with the icing.