I know it's incredibly unusual for me to post two sweet recipes in one month, let alone two in a row, but it pretty much represents the way I eat at this time of year. January to November, I'll probably eat dessert no more than once or twice a month, but come December, every meal must be followed by some sort of sweet, and then between each meal there's plenty of chocolate - so I'm making the most of it before January swings round once again.
This German Krummeltorte might sound fancy, but it's actually ridiculously easy - so much so that you need pretty much no baking ability whatsoever. It's sort of an apple crumble / apple pie / apple cake hybrid, consisting of a layer of cake at the bottom, then a layer of spiced apples, and finished off with a crumbly streusel-like topping. The simplicity of this recipe becomes apparent when you realise that the recipe for the cakey bottom layer is actually identical to the crumble topping - how it works, I have no idea, but somehow it transforms into two different things as it cooks. Must be some sort of magic.
Now I can't actually take full (or any) credit for this recipe, since it's actually one of my late Granny's recipes from her hand-written recipe book that we discovered a while back - aren't those the best? You know a recipe is special when someone has taken the time to write it out by hand into their personal recipe book. My Granny wasn't even remotely German (she was Welsh, actually), and I have no idea where she got this recipe from originally (probably an old cookbook or one of her friends), so I'll just credit it to her. She was an amazing cook.
The best thing about this cake is how versatile it is - if you let it cool, you can serve it as a teatime snack with a cup of tea, or if you serve it while it's warm with a drizzle of cream, it's more of an apple crumble-like dessert. It will happily keep for a few days, so you can even do both!
- ~700g apples (a mixture of cooking and eating apples)
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 150g granulated sugar
- 100g butter or margarine
- 250g self-raising flour
- 1 egg
- 2tbsp demerara sugar
- Preheat the oven to 190°C (Gas Mark 5 / 375°F). Line and lightly grease a spring-form cake tin measuring around 9 inches.
- Peel and core the apples, and cut them into chunks or slices. Add them to a pan with the cinnamon and a third of the granulated sugar, and cook over a low heat for 5 minutes until nearly soft. Set aside.
- Rub the butter and the flour together, then add the remaining granulated sugar and egg, and mix well with a fork to form a breadcrumb-like mixture.
- Press two-thirds of the cake mixture into the cake tin, and add the stewed apples in a slightly rounded heap, leaving a small gap around the edge. Then sprinkle the remaining cake mixture around the sides and over the top of the apples. Top with a couple of tablespoons of demerara sugar.
- Bake for around 40 minutes, or until golden brown. To serve warm, leave to stand for a few minutes, and then release from the spring-form pan. To serve cold, leave it to cool in the tin and then remove and slice.
Helen says
I have made this so many times, but I always find that the base does not cook through well enough, always seems a bit stodgy. I don’t put too much apple moisture in, I think maybe just covering the base is enough to keep it from cooking well enough. I will try baking the base first I think. But utterly delicious anyway, even if stodgy at times.
Becca @ Easy Cheesy Vegetarian says
Thanks for the feedback Helen! I'm glad you've enjoyed it enough to keep making it anyway - I personally like a bit of stodge sometimes :D
Annabel says
Have just made this, and it is utterly delicious. I did put a bit of caramel sauce in with the apples, and we have agreed that this made it a bit too sweet, so next time, we'll leave it out. I have 3 - well, 2 now - boxes of prepared cooking apples in the freezer (gift from my mother or brother, not sure which), and this is a lovely way of eating them.
However, I have a feeling my younger grandson would want me to call it gruffalo crumble.....
Becca @ Amuse Your Bouche says
Yay I'm really glad you like this recipe! My Granny was a clever lady. Why Gruffalo crumble?!
Annabel says
He loves that poem:
"And now my tummy's beginning to rumble,
And my favourite food is gruffalo crumble!" So he has been asking for gruffalo crumble for weeks - he can help me make it next time I cook with the boys, if he hasn't already been helping his mother make it.
Becca @ Amuse Your Bouche says
Ah ok haha! Sounds good - this would be such an easy recipe to cook with kids :)
Matthew says
How many apples 5 or 6? I also don't have any demerara sugar on hand. Can I just use cane sugar?
Becca @ Amuse Your Bouche says
I'm sure any sort of sugar would work fine :) I don't know the exact number of apples I used, but 5 or 6 sounds about right! The exact number doesn't matter really, it just depends how apple-y you'd like it to be!
Angrboda says
I made this recipe this afternoon. The apples on our little tiny tree in the garden are beginning to ripen, still a bit hard but totally edible. And I'd just bought some apples from the shop because I didn't think our own were ready yet. Turns out I'd been testing them wrong. Oh well. Result, lots of apples at my disposal. This cake seemed the obvious solution, especially since I already had all the things.
I served mine with a bit of whipped cream, foolishly whipping up the whole quarter liter carton, so now I may have to bake a second cake to get all that whipped cream used up... Oh damn! ;)
I'm considering adding nuts to it, though. Either hazelnut or walnut, although I'm leaning mostly towards hazelnuts. I'm sort of imagining it finely chopped and mixed with the demerara sugar on top, or possibly roughly chopped, toasted and mixed with the apple. It's worth the experiment, I feel.
Becca @ Amuse Your Bouche says
Glad you liked it! :) Nuts would be a fab addition, I'd go for walnuts myself, but then I'm not really a fan of hazelnuts. Enjoy the rest of it! :D