Comfort me with apples

The timeless comfort of an apple cake

I’m borrowing Ruth Reich’s memoir title to introduce the theme of today’s newsletter: comfort and apples. (By the way, did you know that Ruth Reichl has a newsletter here on Substack? She has a thread on comfort food, too.)

Simple and domestic, romantic enough, juicy, fragrant, accessible, sensual, everyday food: apples know how to tell stories that fascinate generations of people since immemorial time.

The quest for the perfect apple cake is like searching for the Holy Grail: infinite, legendary, epic, exciting. Each season brings new ideas, scents and textures. Have I reached perfection? Nope, and I’m happy to keep on searching and experimenting.

One year my perfect apple cake is embodied by an apple pie with a crisp shell covered with grains of sugar and a melting filling, the next year I’ll vow eternal love to a cinnamon pound cake enriched by cubes of apples and a good dose of warming spices. One year I’m all about tiny cakes, which you can hold in one hand.

At the moment, and in the last 4 years, my ideal comfort food is a warm slice of olive oil apple cake, fragrant with lemon zest, soft and bursting with melt-in-your-mouth apples.

Do you have a favourite apple cake? let me know in the comments!

I shared mine at the bottom of this letter.

Olive oil apple cake

You can dress it up for a dinner party: serve a slice of warm apple cake with a scoop of vanilla gelato, a cloud of whipped cream, or a drizzle of custard. Wrap in foil a slice of cake for a school break or an office break. Bake the olive oil apple cake on a Sunday and enjoy it for breakfast on the first days of the week with a strong coffee or a cappuccino. Keep a slice of cake for an afternoon tea: you don’t need to set a table with china and a lace tablecloth. Choose your favourite tea, brew it and have a well-deserved break with a slice of cake.

Extra virgin olive oil.

This is my favourite ingredient, something that in my book deserves a little investment as it can completely uplift your cooking. I cook with extra virgin olive oil, fry with it, bake with it. If you don’t feel like using extra virgin olive oil you can substitute it with a cold-pressed sunflower seed oil or rice oil, which have definitely a more delicate taste.

I am used to the aroma of olive oil in a cake, and I do appreciate it, especially when paired with lemon juice, as in this cake: it gives the most humble apple cake a Mediterranean twist.

Apples.

I usually bake with gala apples, but feel free to choose the apples you prefer. The best apples are those that sit in the bowl on your kitchen counter. This is quite an apple loaded cake, as there are three thinly sliced in the batter and one on the top, so you’ll have a moist cake which will keep well for a few days, even on your kitchen counter.

You can find the recipe for my olive oil apple cake in the blog archive.

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Comfort food as childhood memories

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More apple cakes from the blog archive

• Tiny orange apple cakes. These are perfect for those who are hungry for life and sweet treats, but also large enough to be romantically shared, bite after bite.

• Apple bread pudding cake. Bread and milk, two basic and soothing ingredients on their own. Then add a touch of vanilla, the moisture of apples, the richness of raisins and dried figs, the deep flavour of prunes. Imagine the comfort of simmering the milk in a saucepan with an open vanilla pod. That smell will permeate your kitchen and welcome you in the morning for breakfast. 

• Apple pie. If I had to choose a traditional American dessert, just one, to eat every day, I would choose a fruit pie. That’s because the seasonal fruit is the true protagonist, enclosed in a buttery crust that is not stealing the attention from the filling. Each season has its pie, from a spring strawberries and rhubarb pie to summer pies with peaches or blueberries, the juiciest ones, up to an apple and blackberry pie, in between summer and autumn.

• Apple and custard tart. A shortcrust shell, apricot jam, silky pastry cream, and caramelized apples: this is one of my favourite apple cakes.

• Apple and cinnamon pound cake. Essential in its simplicity, moist inside thanks to the soft apples, light and comforting. It is autumn knocking at your door, open and let in a gust of fresh air and yellow leaves. A slice of apple pound cake and a cup of orange and cinnamon tea will warm you up.

• Mascarpone apple cake. Another pound cake recipe disguised as apple cake, with mascarpone to make it moist and delicious.