Apple Walnut Whiskey Cake

When I was a kid, my mom used to make a German Apple Cake. Our recipes mostly came from neighbors trying to help out a lady from France who could barely speak a lick of English but had two hungry non-stop sons. It was stiff batter with apples, sugar and cinammon on top. It absorbed more milk than a black hole, almost. Dense, plain, you could taste the salt in some bites of the bottom of the cake, and she burnt it sometimes, so it felt like a kind of penance to eat some, save for the apples being still good.

I tried to make a healthy apple cake from Heidi Swanson's blog, but it was too dry and healthy for us, probably because we are not from California or used to cakes so crumby and dry. I mean, 2.5 cups of whole wheat pastry flour! I think she undercooked it, said she undercooked it, and then gave a time for it to bake that was *not* undercooking it. My mistake.

So then I took my standby Martha Stewart Saffron Pear Cake and made some serious adjustments. To avoid confusion, here's the recipe in its entirety:

9 X 13" ceramic or metal pan (aluminum makes a more caramelized topping for some reason -- hotter).

3 apples sliced thin and put in lemon water
a bag of crushed walnut pieces
1 stick of butter
1.5 cups sugar
1 7/8 cup flour
scant 2 t baking powder
3/4 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves/nutmeg
3/4 t salt
7/8 C buttermilk
1/3 C vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Let butter be very soft. Mix it with 1/3 C of the sugar, a third of the cinnamon, and dashes of cloves and nutmeg. Mix until fluffy.

2. Put parchment paper in the bottom of the pan. The strip of it can be a little narrower than the pan.

3. Spread this butter mixture evenly over the bottom of the pan.

4. Sprinkle walnuts in a pretty thick layer over the butter and sugar mixture, but leave about an inch free of nuts all the way around the edge of the pan. Move a nut if you have to. If you don't do this, the apples will slop out when you flip the cake: it'll look like a dog got to it.

5. Layer apples thinly over walnuts. Leave that perimeter of butter alone.

6. Mix the rest of the sugar and everything else together. Pour carefully over the nuts and sugar/butter mixture.

7. Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Make sure toothpick comes out pretty clean, maybe a little crumb or two on it.

8. Let cake sit for 10 minutes. IMPORTANT.

9. Find a platter big enough to turn the cake over on. Do it. Peel off the parchment.

10. Let this cool.

11. Then, while it's cooling, drizzle some Jim Beam on it somehow. Poke little skewers in it and soak it through or give it a Jim Beam IV. Whatever it takes, maybe even the way they get whiskey into a drunk fruitcake. You wouldn't want it to cook it off either.

I'd serve with plain whipped cream, or if you can't imagine drizzling Jim Beam directly on the cake, put it in the whipping cream where it can be present more subtly.

The top should be between a sugar syrup and a carmelized sauce.

Someone else thought apples and whiskey were a good idea: Butterscotch Whiskey Sauce. Indeed.