Swedish Apple Cake

We watched "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" the other night, and of course, a Swedish movie calls for some Swedish pastry to accompany it. So I dug out my copy of "The Great Scandinavian Baking Book" and V. picked out this apple cake. The beauty of this book is that almost all the recipes are straight-forward, no frills, using basic ingredients, so it's easy to throw something together for a last minute get-together with friends! As always, I tweaked the recipe a little bit (I used less sugar than stated, and I omitted the suggested step of drizzling icing sugar over the finished cake), so what you see below is my version.

This recipe is very similar to what my mom used to make in Germany when I was little. There's a general Northern European-ness to this kind of cake I think...basic, not too sweet batter, topped with something fruity! Not fancy, but so satisfying that everybody ate at least 2 pieces!

Bake in a 9" springform pan!

Swedish Apple Cake

2/3 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

4 eggs

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

4 medium apples, pared, peeled, and cut into thick slices

2 tblsp sugar for tossing

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1/4 cup simple syrup

1/4 cup rum (I used dark St. James from Martinique)

Grease the cake pan and pre-heat the oven to 350F.

Cream the butter and sugar. Gradually add the eggs until the mixture is light and fluffy. Combine the flour and baking powder and then mix into the creamed mixture, until just incorporated. Turn into the prepared cake pan.

Put the apples in a bowl and toss with the sugar and cinnamon. Press into the cake batter and sprinkle with almonds, so it looks like this:

It's a rustic cake, so there's no need to be too neat about this process!

Bake for 40-45 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.

In the meantime, make some simple syrup: bring 1/4 cup of water to boil with 1/2 cup of sugar, until all the sugar has dissolved.

Mix the rum into the simple syrup. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, spoon the syrup all over the cake. You want to add enough to make it moist, but not so much that it get soggy. But don't be shy....it can absorb quite a lot and your cake will have a delicious rum aroma!!