The fall apple harvest is a delicious prelude to lattice-topped apple pies, silky apple butters, cinnamon apple sauce, and fresh-pressed cider. But when it comes to processing and preparing your you-pick haul, don’t forget cake: maybe the simplest category of baked goods, one that lets home cooks of any level make apples the delicious focal point of dessert. We’ve rounded up recipes for the apple cakes we’ll be making this season — including pound cakes, Bundt cakes, and more than one upside-down cake.
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Apple Upside-Down Cake
Cara Cormack
This upside-down cake starts by lining the bottom of the pan with salted brown-sugar butter, then pressing in thick apple wedges before pouring in the batter. Turn it out of the tin to reveal a gorgeous sticky-sweet fruit topping.
Apple Sharlotka
Food & Wine / Photo by Jason Donnelly / Food Styling by Holly Dreesman / Prop Styling by Addelyn Evans
Apple sharlotka is a classic Russian dessert that is almost more apple than cake — not too sweet and delicious served with unsweetened whipped cream or crème fraîche. This recipe, shared by chef Matt Danko, was passed down from his father.
Caramelized Apple Bread with Candied Ginger and Almond
Caitlin Bensel / Prop Styling by Christina Daley / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall
Sure, it’s yeasted and dense enough to qualify as a bread, but this treat from cookbook author Samantha Seneviratne is pure sweet, gooey, buttery goodness. The large apple slices baked into the surface are coated in caramel in the style of a tarte Tatin.
Cinnamon-Apple Babka
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Ali Ramee / Prop Styling by Christina Daley
Babka, another bread that can also be styled as a sweet, dense dessert, holds up well to lots of apples braided into the dough. This version is reminiscent of a gooey iced cinnamon roll, but with thin slices of Honeycrisp hidden throughout.
Apple-Rum Spice Cake
For this cake, chef Joanne Chang incorporates apples not into the batter but into the compote spread between each layer. The apples are cooked down with spices and brown sugar, then spiked with rum — a perfect foil to the ginger cream cheese frosting.
Cheddar Cheese Pound Cake with Brandy Caramel Apples
Sarah Crowder / Food Styling by Chandra Ram
Okay, the cake itself contains no apples — but apples are the key to unlocking its true potential. Chef Dawn Burrell plays on the old-school combo of apple pie and orange cheddar, pairing a sweet cheddar-infused pound cake with a brandy-spiked apple topping.
Apple and Olive Oil Bundt Cake
This Bundt cake, tender and flavorful from the olive oil and packed with chunks of Granny Smith apples, is a fall favorite for Seattle baker Rachel Coyle. With Italian apple cakes as the blueprint, she adds more complexity of flavor with cardamom and grated orange zest.
Maple-Apple Upside-Down Cake
Con Poulos
Also from Joanne Chang, the recipe for this upside-down cake begins with reducing pure maple syrup over high heat until thick. As the first layer at the bottom of the pan, it will infuse both the apples and cake with sticky maple flavor — almost like a stack of apple pancakes.
Apple Cake with Toffee Crust
Anna Williams
Pastry chef Lara Atkins makes a version of an apple cake her mother loved to serve, glazed with sticky toffee and topped with caramelized cinnamon apples and caramel sauce. It’s best eaten with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
