Apple Spice Cake for Thanksgiving 2024

 On this Thanksgiving, our family decided to have a mixed menu, including some traditional items like roasted turkey breast, mashed potatoes and stuffing, but also some different things like baked haddock, bay scallops and kale with chestnuts. We spent Thanksgiving at Grandpa's house, and we arrived the day before on Wednesday after a 3 hour drive. This seemed like a good year to try a dessert that was not pumpkin pie. I remembered that Uncle S. had talked about how much he used to like penuche frosting as a kid. So, I decided to make a cake with penuche frosting, and ended up choosing this recipe from King Arthur Baking.  This way we wouldn't have to travel several hours with a perishable pie in the car, and I wouldn't have to make a pumpkin pie in someone else's kitchen, rolling out pie dough and deciding when the custard is done. The latter is difficult enough in my own kitchen!

I used two kinds of apples for the cake, Granny Smith and Pink Lady. Is brought to scale, and the cake only required 4 apples. It was very easy to put together, which was the plan. But, using someone else's oven, it was not so easy to bake! I saw the edges of the cake start to brown almost immediately.  I let it bake for the entire baking time but it was still not done. I tested it several times with a knife into the center, covered it in foil, and disallow found a thermometer in the kitchen that helped me know when it was done. But by now, the cake was definitely overbaked and the bottom kind of charred.

I let the cake cool, covered it, and decided to make the frosting in the morning.

I'd never heard of penuche ( pronounced penewchay) frosting until Uncle S mentioned it. It's an old fashioned frosting that's basically a maple fudge. I read a recipe from Brown Eyed Baker and the one from King Arthur and sort of combined the two. You have to be ready to pour the icing onto the cake and spread it right away because it starts to set. This isn't really that hard to do in a 9×13 pan. If frosting a layer cake I think it would be more difficult. I'd actually stay away from that. There was an option to use less sugar but I went with the higher amount I the King Arthur's recipe. 

The King Arthur recipe calls for using reduced apple cider in both the cake and the frosting. For the I reduced 1.5 cups to get 2 tbsps. It took forever and when it cooled it was so concentrated that it turned into a solid. I had to warm it up to add it to the cake. I didn't feel like doing all this for the frosting too, so I omitted it.

But perversely, the reduced apple cider would probably have enhanced the penuche frosting, while in the cake you couldn't really taste it. The frosting went well with the cake and it covered up a multitude of sins. You couldn't taste the char, and it minimized the dryness of the cake. You couldn't taste the apple, either. 

For the decorations, I'd spent some time before we left our house coloring fondant in Fall colors.  I think I did a pretty good job! I made flowers decorations of different sizes and in different  olors using fondant molds I have, and I also made the word "Grateful". The cake looked very pretty when it was out together!

No cake us at its best when overbaked. The recipe is worth keeping because it's easy, feeds and crowd and tastes good. SIL always has a sparky comment. She declared that it was like a carrot cake. In spite of all this everybody enjoyed their piece and even Grandpa asked me to leave some behind for him when we left the next day.

But most importantly, when Uncle S tried it he said "Yep. That's the taste!". He seemed to like it so... Mission Accomplished!