Monday 24 October 2011

Pumpkin-Apple Streusel Cake

This recipe for Pumpkin-Apple Streusel Cake, from Epicurious, was chosen to use up the rest of the can of pumpkin purée, which I'd opened to make the spiced chocolate orange cake from my previous post. I'm afraid to say this cake wasn't nearly as successful. The pumpkin cake layer was very moist and dense and the homemade pumpkin pie spice was rather overwhelming - in fact CT and Hubs didn't really like it at all! The photo looks worse than the cake actually was - cutting into the dense sponge seemed to compress it, so that the texture was lost, but within the slices the sponge texture was still there!

I followed the recipe almost exactly! I substituted 100mls oil and a tablespoon of water for the butter in the cake batter and used four cups of several varieties of homegrown apples which I had in the kitchen. I've no idea what variety the apple from my mother was, but the apples I grew were Blenheim Beauty and Falstaff. I made the pumpkin pie spice from this recipe.

I like the concept of this cake - the layer of buttery, cinnamon spiced apples on top of a cake, with a crisp streusel topping - but this time the cake wasn't quite right. I could see the idea working well on a ginger cake, but you'd need to be sure that the apples wouldn't sink.

Today, I had to make a batch of our favourite 'healthy' brownies, for CT, who won't eat any more of this particular cake!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you ever thought about teaching CT to cook?

Suelle said...

I have, Anonymous, lots of times, but he's not interested. He's quite happy to live off supermarket ready-meals and bought cakes when he has to fend for himself.

Baking Addict said...

It's a shame you didnt really like the cake. Sounds like the pumpkin was the cause. At least CT got brownies which sound delicious!

Shaheen said...

I was curious about this combination, but seeing that you were not keen on it, I guess I will too be giving it a miss - but take on board your suggestion for gingerbread. Ah but there are always brownies!

Suelle said...

Don't let me put you off, Shaheen. It may just have been my pumpkin pie spice mix, or there may have been too much pumpkin puree in the mix. On reflection, I took out 1/2 cup for the previous recipe, then used the rest in this recipe. Since then I've read that there are two cups of purée in a can, so I used a cup and a half, even though it looked less than a cup when transferred to a measuring jug. Damn, I hate cups!!

tori said...

Even if the flavours didn't quite meld, you had me at the streusal topping.