Apple cream cheese coffee cake

It’s apple season baby!

I love apple season, because apples to me are the quintessential fruit – they are sweet, tart, tangy, they are great in baking sweet dishes, cooking savoury ones and on their own.  They are such a versatile and easy fruit to work with.

There really isn’t anything you can’t do with apples – I mean you can bake cakes, muffins, pies, crumbles and more.  They are incredible when paired with pork, and poultry; they make fantastic preserves, you can even pickle them if you want. Then there’s apple sauce and chutney, you can add apples to oatmeal, yogurt  and smoothies too.  They make a mean grilled cheese, are yummy on other sandwiches, amazing in salads and there pretty damn good on pizzas too.  So yeah – apple season is a good season; it gets my creative juices flowing.

So when a friend so generously gave me a giant bucket of apples this past week, I wanted to create something new with them.

Cheesecake is one of the only desserts I really enjoy (I’m more of a bag of chips and a block of cheese kinda girl) – because its made of cheese, which is pretty much my favourite thing; but if I make a cheesecake it almost always goes to waste because we don’t eat more than one or two pieces.  So I decided to play around a bit because I wanted to do something cheesecake-like, I just wasn’t sure what.  I was thinking apple cheesecake bars, or something like that, but it quickly turned into this apple cream cheese coffee cake; part cake, part cheesecake, and a whole lotta apple flavour.

And this cake is the real deal friends – no vegan alternatives on this one….can it be done sure, but this cake is best just the way it is with real butter and real cream cheese, so I’m going to leave it at that.  If you are vegan, I’m sure you could substitute vegan butter and tofutti (vegan cream cheese) but I haven’t tried it, so I can’t guarantee it.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup maple sugar + 1/4 cup + 2 tsp (regular sugar is fine too)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 2 large eggs
• 11/2 cups flour
• 11/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 11/2 tsp cinnamon + 1/4 tsp
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 3 cups of chopped apples
• 1 tbsp of fresh lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Peel and dice apples and add to a medium bowl.  Add 11/2 tsp of cinnamon, the 1/2 tsp of allspice, 1/4 cup maple sugar and 1 tbsp of lemon juice, stir together until fully coated and set aside.
3. In a large mixing bowl cream together sugar, butter, cream cheese and vanilla. Once it’s well mixed add the eggs one at a time and beat until smooth.
4. In a separate bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt, then slowly add to the wet ingredients mixing on medium speed until fully incorporated.
5. Lastly, stir in the apples by hand.
6. Grease an 8″ springform pan and pour batter into it. Then mix the 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and 2 tsp of maple sugar together and sprinkle over the cake.  Put in the oven on the middle rack and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes at 350F or until toothpick comes out clean.  I check mine at 45 min and then again at on hour.
7. Remove from oven and let cool. Then remove from the pan.  Can be stored in the refridgerator for 5 days.  It is best warmed up just before serving.

This cake is creamy, dense, sweet and spicy and all the good stuff you want from dessert.

I used apples fresh from the tree, and if you can do that, or as close to that as possible – I highly recommend it.  But grocery store apples will do fine too.

This cake is great served with cup of coffee in the morning, a cup of tea in the evening, or with vanilla bean ice cream for dessert.  It stores well in the fridge for 5 days, but I promise you it won’t last that long.

Till the next recipe,

Kristen xo