Name: Apple cake with sour cream and spice
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 70 min
Total time: 95 min
Ingredients: 4 apples; 2 cups plain flour; 3/4 cup white sugar; 1 cup soft brown sugar; 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon; 1 tsp ground Allspice; 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg; 1 tsp baking powder; 1 tsp baking soda; 1/2 tsp salt; 1 egg; 1/2 cup oil (canola or other mild flavoured oil); 1 tsp vanilla extract; 2/3 cup sour cream; 1/2 cup milk; 1 tsp cinnamon; 2 tsp white sugar; 1 tbsp rolled oats

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This apple cake with sour cream and spice is beautifully simple to make, and deliciously sweet and moist to eat. One slice often isn’t enough!

A picture of an apple cake with crunchy oatmeal topping

I love an apple cake that’s rich and moist and you can actually see the fruit. And I love an apple cake with a crunchy top. This beautiful spiced apple sour cream cake delivers on both counts. Packed full of slices of sweet apple and fairly heavily spiced, this cake has a lovely (optional) crunchy topping that means there’s no need for icing.

This recipe is great because apples are available year round. And cake is delicious year round. No need to wait for anything to come into season. Its just as perfect for morning tea in the sun as it is gently warmed and served for dessert with lashings of cream in colder months. For this reason apples are one of my favourite fruits to bake with. My Baked custard tart with spiced apple or Apple pie muffins with salted caramel centre are some more great examples of this.

Easy peasy baking

The other thing I really love about this cake is it is an adaption of my easy peasy basic cake recipe. That recipe is literally almost fool-proof. Simply combine all the dry ingredients in one bowl and mix together the wet ingredients in another. Then put the two together and add the apple. A good stir to make sure everything is happily mixed and then it’s in to the oven.

A cut section of a rich spiced apple cake

The not so secret, secret ingredient

The secret to making this cake more than just your everyday apple cake, is the addition of a generous 2/3 cup of sour cream. Adding the sour cream brings richness and a delicious denseness to this cake. And if you’re not a fan of sour cream, don’t despair. You can’t actually taste it in the finished cake – its more for texture and decadence than it is for flavour.

The other great addition is the (optional) crunchy topping. Obviously its your choice to add it or not, but I really like the bite it gives to the top of the cake. Plus, with a topping there’s no need to ice the cake so you can just dive straight in to enjoying it.

A top-down view of an apple cake with a crunchy oatmeal topping

Apple cake with sour cream and spice

A rich moist cake full of apple and spice

Course Dessert

Keyword apple, baking, cake

Prep Time 25 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour 10 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 35 minutes

Servings 12 slices

Ingredients

4 apples
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup soft brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground Allspice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 cup oil canola or other mild flavoured oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk

Optional topping

1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp white sugar
1 tbsp rolled oats

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, standard bake function. Grease and line a 22cm cake tin.
In a large bowl, add the flour, sugars, spices, baking powder, soda and salt. Stir to combine well.
In a separate bowl or jug, break the egg and beat it gently to mix up the yolk and the white. Add the oil, vanilla, sour cream and milk and stir to combine.
Peel the apples and slice them into 1/2 cm slices. If you prefer you can but them into 1cm cubes but I like to leave them a bit bigger so you can see the chunks of fruit in the cake when you eat it.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the contents of the jug. Mix until just combined, and then add in the apples. Stir the apples through until they are coated with the cake mixture.
Transfer the cake mixture to the prepared baking tin and use a spatula to gently smooth out the top. If using the optional topping, combine the ingredients in a small bowl and then sprinkle evenly over the top of the cake. Take care not to get any topping too close to the edges of the cake otherwise the sugar may stick to the sides of the tin and make it difficult to turn out the cake once its cooked.
Bake for around an hour, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out cleanly. I found my cake needed a little over an hour to cook fully, due to the denseness of the cake and the amount of fruit.