Apple Spice Bundt Cake with Maple-Sugar Glaze for Fall Fun {Webisode #48}
What’s Going on Today: Prepping for Halloween night, having a bbq with the neighbors!
Naptime Goals: Make Apple Spice Bundt Cake with Maple Glaze, buy beer.
Tonight’s Menu: Brats, Dip, Cake, Beer.
Parenting Lesson of the Day: Halloween is now an endurance holiday, it lasts almost as long as Christmas!
Halloween has proved to be a much longer holiday than I expected. When I was little it was one night of trick-or-treating. But sometime in the thirty year span between my childhood and my daughter’s, Halloween morphed into a much bigger deal. Over the course of the weekend we attended no fewer than four events all of which required costumes and receiving candy. Not to mention the Halloween themed meals, school parties and presents (!) that preceded the big day. I couldn’t believe how busy we were!
By the end of the weekend my Blue Tootsie Pop (her costume idea) was tuckered out. To make the actual day of Halloween fun and relaxed my neighbors and I decided to have a little bbq and restrict trick-or-treating to our local neighborhood only. We wanted to give it the family fun feeling, strolling the streets, chatting with neighbors, that we remembered from growing up.
Our neighbors hale from Minnesota where, they tell me, Brats (the sausage) is a common local dish. We’d been wanting to organize a fun brats cook-out for a while and Halloween seemed like the perfect occasion. They are easy to cook on the grill and perfect for a casual dinner in costume. As you’ll see above, I baked a delicious apple spice cake as my contribution to the meal. I love this cake because it is intensely flavored and is topped with my all-time favorite maple glaze. It is simply the perfect pairing of fall flavors and is one of my go-to cakes for fall gatherings. It turned out to the be the perfect finish to our brats and beer cookout. We waited to eat it until we returned from trick-or-treating as the parent’s reward for surviving the whole ordeal. Next up, Thanksgiving.
Recipe
Apple Spice Bundt Cake with Maple Glaze
adapted from Once Upon a Tart
Ingredients
| 2 | sticks unsalted butter, room temperature |
| 3 ½ | cups all-purpose flour |
| 1 ½ | teaspoons baking soda |
| 1 | Tablespoon cinnamon |
| 1 | teaspoon nutmeg |
| 1 | teaspoon ground cloves |
| 1 ½ | teaspoons salt |
| 1 ½ | cups granulated sugar |
| 1 ½ | cups light brown sugar, packed |
| 4 | large eggs |
| 2 | teaspoons vanilla extract |
| 1 ½ | cups cold buttermilk |
| 4 | large tart apples, peeled and shredded |
For the Glaze:
| 2 | Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened |
| ½ | cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted |
| 2 | Tablespoons maple syrup |
Instructions
Kitchen Tools Used: A standard 9 inch bundt pan is a must in each kitchen. If you don’t have one click here to buy it at my Amazon store!
1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Butter a 9 inch bundt pan and lightly dust the inside with flour.
2. In a mixing bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt.
3. In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. With the mixer on low, beat in the eggs one at a time. Then add the vanilla and mix again.
4. With the mixer on low add half of the buttermilk followed by half of the flour mixture. Repeat and mix until no more flour is visible. Add the shredded apples and mix them in with a spoon. The batter will be very thick.
5. Scrape the batter into the prepared Bundt pan and smooth the top. Baked it for 50 minutes to 1 hour. Check doneness with a cake tester. Let the cake cool on a wire rack in the Bundt pan for 10 minutes. Then turn it out onto a wire rack and let it cool completely.
6. To make the Glaze: Whisk together the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. Beat in the maple syrup until it is completely incorporated. Allow it to sit at room temperature until ready to use.
7. Once the cake has cooled completely drizzle the glaze over it and serve.
Naptime Notes
Naptime Recipe Serving ideas
This slice and serve bundt cake holds up very well to travel. I love taking it on longer trips to people’s houses for potlucks. I’ve even made it for my friend after she had a new baby! It also makes a commanding centerpiece at any fall party.
Naptime Stopwatch
20 minutes for the cake, 5 minutes for the glaze.
Naptime Reviews
My neighbor doesn’t love the texture of baked apples, like in a pie, but she loved this. Like banana bread it has all the flavor of apples without the chunky texture. Kids love it too, not that they needed it before the candy onslaught!
I am sure the maple syrup glaze enhance the taste of the cake.
Hi Krystle, yes the maple syrup glaze is a really nice touch!
bundt cakes are my all time favorite. have you been following The Food Librarian and her 30 days of bundts? Tomorrow is national bundt day. yay!
That’s so cool Damaris, thanks for sharing!!
[…] Great Cakes: Apple Spice Bundt Cake with Maple Glaze, Lemon Pudding Cake, Pear Butter […]
Oh yum! 🙂
Oh. My. Gosh! This cake was delicious! I had been looking for an good apple bundt cake recipe, made the one featured in Southern Living last month–it just wasn’t very good. I made your cake to take to a meeting last night, and some of the other board members asked to take pieces home with them, along with what they ate during the meeting! My hubby and I ate some last night when I got home…and I had a piece for breakfast. EEK! I’ve already begun the holiday gluttony! The only thing I changed was the icing (we’re not big maple fans)–I made a praline glaze/icing. Thank you sooo much for this recipe–it’s a keeper! (And I love the name of your blog, BTW…)
Hi Julie, THANKS! I am so glad you liked the cake! I love your idea of the praline glaze – icings are so flexible you should always do what you want. Hope to see you again soon!
The glaze is deeeelicious but mine came out way too thick to drizzle. Anything I should try and do differently? Should the butter be soft or melted? I spread it on like an icing. And licked the spatula clean 🙂
Hi! You can always add a little more liquid to thin out the icing to be more drizzling consistency!
[…] adapted this recipe from the Naptime Chef’s version because I didn’t have enough powdered sugar on […]
This was my first time making a bundt cake and this recipe was awesome. The maple glaze is very good and it adds a nice touch to the cake. The whole family loved it! Thanks! 🙂
Hi Alicia,
I am so glad to hear this. Enjoy your fall! Best, Kelsey
This recipe was AWESOME!! SO tasty. I had a little trouble getting it to cook all the way through. Do you pull it out when it’s still a little “gooey” on your knife when testing? Perhaps I should have omitted the juice from grating the apples? I pulled mine out of the oven after 68 minutes because I didn’t want the outside to get overdone. It tastes very moist and delicious, but I was a liiiiiiiittle nervous when I pulled it out of the oven. Perhaps my oven needs a lower temp and longer amount of time for baking.
Hi Caitlyn – I am glad you liked it! Yes, this is a dense cake. Ovens differ so greatly, definitely just lower the temp and bake longer to make sure it bakes evenly. Happy holidays!
I just finished baking it and had a bit of a problem. Either my bundt pan sides are too low or something else happened. The cake hadn’t been in the oven more the 10 minutes and the batter bubbled over. It wasn’t a small amount either. Perhaps a cup or more. When I made the batter, I only had a cup of all purpose flour. I made up the rest with some whole wheat pastry flour. Perhaps that or the cup of pecans I added caused the problem
It also seemed to take a bit longer to bake. I was about an hour and 20 mins.@ 350 before the knife came out semi clean The cake looks good, can’t wait to try it.
Hi! This is strange. Perhaps your pan was too small? This makes a lot of batter. Hope you liked it!