Apple sponge cake with walnuts

How to make an apple sponge cake with walnuts . The neighbor just asked me, what are you cooking at home that smells the whole doorway of apples? Well, I’m just making an apple cake.

Imagine the smell in the kitchen … we should patent it and make an air freshener with the aroma of tart or apple cake , this smell turns your home into a home. And it is that I really feel at home every time I prepare any of these dessert recipes and incidentally give a little envy in the neighborhood, although I am usually a good neighbor and distribute, that’s how we all get fat.

It is the fourth time that I prepare this dessert, it is a winning sponge cake, saving the chocolate ones. The original recipe comes from a friend from Ourense although I have varied it slightly with some walnuts from my father’s walnut trees and a touch of ground cinnamon. In Galicia it is very common to prepare desserts with apples since they abound in the orchards of the towns and villages.

It is used as a base for an apple pie, filled with pancakes , roasted apples, in fritters, puff pastry, homemade jams, apple pie and pastry cream , an  apple and carrot strudel and of course , this sponge cake that I present to you . Endless recipes in which the apple is the queen.

This dessert goes as a small tribute to my father, Jesus, because thanks to him I have apples in abundance. Take care of all the fruit trees in Viñoas, Ourense and most of them are apple trees. We have many varieties of apple: golden (very tasty and golden and red in color), maiden green (with an acid touch and an intense green color), the reinetas (very tasty, with a hard pulp and balanced in its flavor, not very not very sweet) and my favorites, some reddish wild apples, small in size that are delicious, a little bit acidic, but they can’t stand the same as the others. You see we have apples for the whole year.

Preparation of the apple cake

1. In a large bowl beat the eggs with the sugar until it doubles its volume, when they are well, add the liquid cream and mix well with the mixer.
2. We wash the tangerine and grate its peel. We add to the previous cream.
3. In the same bowl we introduce a pinch of salt, the liquid butter and the sunflower oil.
4. We beat everything until there are no lumps.
5. In the next step we mix the yeast with the flour and add it to the previous bowl, beat again. Let stand 10 minutes.
6. While resting, peel the apples and remove the center of the apple. We cut them into unequal sheets, breaking with the knife the fruit, in a size similar to a fried potato.
7. It is very important to peel and laminate the apples at the last moment, in contact with the air they rust and look bad. If you prepare this step before, do not forget to add a little lemon juice so that they do not have a rusty color.
8. We combine the apple pieces with the vanilla sugar, cinnamon, walnuts and pine nuts in a bowl.
9. We stir well by hand until everything is well mixed, it will be what gives that magnificent flavor to the cake.
10. In this step we can choose to either cover the chosen mold with waxed paper or oven paper or the simplest option to prevent the cake from sticking, we spread the mold with butter.
11. After putting it we can sprinkle flour removing the excess with a few taps of the wrist.
12. Once we have spread the mold with butter, add the sponge cake cream to the chosen container.
13. We introduce the apples and nuts on top of the cream. With the help of a fork, mix a little with the dough. Not much because we are not interested in the pieces going down to the bottom of the cake.

Baked. Final preparation of the apple cake

1. Baking is perhaps the most important thing in a cake, each oven is a world. In my mother’s house we have the simplest, warm up and down of all life. Once you have a good control of your home oven, surely there is no recipe that will resist you.
2. We preheat the oven to 190º C for 5 minutes.
3. We put the cake in the oven (heat option up and down, in the middle tray of it) at 180º C for about 40 minutes.
4. The last 5-10 minutes, we cover the cake with a little aluminum foil. We lower the temperature to 170º C so that it does not burn us. As I mentioned in some other recipe, everything depends on the oven, always look with a fork, prick the cake and when it is dry, remove it.
5. Let cool for a few hours. We unmold.
6. Many of the apple tarts are topped with a small layer of peach or apricot jam.
7. I personally do not like it because it takes away the apple flavor, so I recommend sprinkling it with a little icing sugar.

I assure you that it is a cake that will not leave even the crumbs, accompany it with a good coffee or tea. I hope you like it and are encouraged to do so.

You can see all the photos of the step by step in the next album.