Apples aren’t special enough for showstopper desserts…said no one ever.
This Vanilla Pound Cake With Apples is a case in point. Your guests won’t be able to stop talking about how wonderfully the apples complement the vanilla cake.
This recipe is adapted from a recipe in Joanne Chang’s Pastry Love cookbook (available here ). Per her recipe, I used Granny Smith apples on my cake.
The Granny Smith apple is an oldie in the apple world. It has been around since 1868 when it was developed by…d’oh!…Granny Smith. Smith apparently discovered the seedlings in her compost pile in Sydney, Australia, where she tossed apple scraps and seeds. If that’s not serendipity…
The rest is history, of course. The Granny Smith has been a consistent top performer in the apple world ever since. With high acid levels in the fruit, it has proven to be excellent for baking as well as for eating raw…the perfect apple.
Let’s not rest on our laurels, though. There is a new apple in town and I’m thinking it also would be great in this recipe.
It’s a Cosmic Crisp apple, so named because it’s red skin is flecked with yellow dots reminiscent of stars glittering dimly in some distant galaxy.
The Cosmic Crisp, a cross between the disease resistant Enterprise apple and the mega-hit Honey Crisp apple, is just coming on to the market. It was developed at Washington State University in cooperation with Washington state apple growers. So far, twelve million trees have been planted and growers expect Cosmic Crisp apples to be widely available in 2020 and 2021. Some have been available this year but I haven’t been able to score any. Stay tuned.
I’m sure Granny would approve of a little experimentation.
Here’s the recipe.
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