Apple Cake with Butter Sauce

Grandma to a T

As I mentioned in this post, Grandma's box held three recipes for apple cake, each of them slightly different from the others. This one was unique in a couple of ways. First, it was supposed to be topped with a warm sauce, not frosting. Second, it had more flour than the others and was baked for an hour, so I assumed that meant it should be baked in a tube pan.  I assumed so because Grandma liked tube pans. She also liked apples, so this recipe was classic Grandma.

 How to make Apple Cake with Butter Sauce

I decided to change two things right away. Because I'd already tested one of Grandma's apple cake recipes, I would add "with Butter Sauce" to the title to differentiate between the two. 

The second thing . . . can you guess? Yes, I changed some of the shortening for butter. I didn't dare completely replace the shortening because I didn't know how that would affect the chemistry of the cake, but using half of each seemed safe enough. I measured the shortening using this tool from Pampered Chef. (Not an affiliate link). I then added softened butter and sugar to the shortening and beat them well.   

The eggs went in next. I beat them with the rest of the creamed ingredients until the mixture was light and fluffy. 

Grandma was also a great one for sifting. She would have measured the flour by sifting it into the cup, but I gently swooped it into the cup and then did the sifting using a strainer. All the spices, leavening, and salt went in too, although, I reduced the amount of nutmeg to suit my nutmeg-hater. 

I left that mixture for a few minutes and turned my attention to the apples. The recipe called for four cups. I've found that a large apple usually equals one cup of grated apples, so I pulled out four Granny Smith apples, peeled, and cored them. 

I cut them into quarters, then used this grater (not an affiliate link) to make short work of turning them into coarse shreds. 

I dumped the shredded apples into the bowl where I'd sifted the dry ingredients, because that was what Grandma said to do, and whoa! Could my hand mixer handle all of that?

The answer: it could. I beat the mixture together, then spread it into a greased tube pan, totally forgetting to add the nuts. 

Because my pan was dark, non-stick metal, I set the timer for five minutes less than the recipe said. However, the cake still needed the full hour to bake. Either the pan color didn't matter, or my oven isn't as hot as it should be. The cake looked great when it came out of the pan. 

Next up: the butter sauce. This was where I had my doubts. The ingredients were basic--sugar, butter, and evaporated milk--but the recipe said to cook those ingredients in a double boiler (AKA bain marie) for one hour. That seemed like a long time for a simple sauce, but I did as I was told: put the ingredients in my double boiler pan and placed it over simmering water. (A glass bowl would have also worked.)

The beauty of a double boiler is that you don't have to worry about scorching the milk and be constantly stirring. So I checked on the mixture every so often, giving it the occasional stir, and waited for it to do its thing, whatever that was. I had no idea what the result was supposed to be, but after an hour, it looked like this:

It had turned a beautifully golden caramel color, but it was a very thin sauce. I wondered if I should thicken it somehow but decided to serve it as it was. We had a crowd that day, so the paper plates came out. Here was one of the first slices, topped with a scoop of ice cream and a generous drizzle of Butter Sauce. 

The Verdict

As I continued slicing, topping, and handing the plates around, appreciative murmurs rose from those who'd received their cake. And then these words rang out: "This is my favorite Grandma recipe." 

Wow. High praise indeed, because we've already tasted some excellent recipes.  

At last, I sat down to take a bite, and yes, it was that good. The thin butter sauce with its caramel notes had sunk into the cake, rendering it even moister than it already was and perfectly complementing the tang of the apples. By the end of the evening, my family, who claim not to be cake lovers, had devoured almost the whole thing. 

So good. 

And yet, I still felt the need to fiddle. Did the sauce really have to cook for an hour? Did it really have to be made in a double boiler? 

I decided to find out if a microwave version was possible. I had made a caramel this way using sweetened condensed milk, so I thought it might work. I added the same ingredients to a deep microwave-safe bowl. 

I then set it to cook for seven minutes, stirring every couple of minutes or so. By the end of seven minutes, it was still too pale, so I kept adding time, stirring, and adding more time. 

After about thirteen minutes, the sauce looked almost identical to what was left over from the double-boiler batch. It tasted the same too. The upside of the microwaved version was that it didn't seem to separate as quickly. 

Since I was tweaking stuff, I decided to add a little cornstarch and see how that went. I dissolved a couple of tablespoons in some milk, added the slurry to the hot sauce, and cooked it sauce for an additional minute. The sauce thickened slightly, but to get a really thick sauce, I would have had to add at least a couple more tablespoons. I wasn't ready to risk altering the flavor of the sauce because it's fabulous. I've added directions for the microwave version of the sauce. Just be careful when stirring because it tends to boil up. 

Either way you cook it, this sauce and this cake are a match made in Heaven.