A dozen years in the past I shared my mother-in-law’s recipe for apple sharlotka (which household simply calls “apple factor”), a evenly sweetened apple dessert that’s as a lot a thick crêpe as it’s a cake. It’s bought a brief ingredient listing and is the sort of factor you make on a whim. It’s so rustic and easy, I truthfully didn’t count on it to trigger a ruckus — it’s not apple pie, crumb cake, and even my mother’s doorstop of an apple cake — however you stunned me. It has over 1000 feedback and I’ve seen variations on it everywhere in the web. So the place does this are available? I consider this as Sharlotka 2.0: Fancy Pants Version.
Just a few years in the past, I started recognizing recipes round for gâteau invisible or invisible apple cake, named as a result of the apples appear to vanish. I used to be surprised by their magnificence. However I used to be much more fascinated after I realized how shut the recipe was to sharlotka: They’re each principally comprised of apples tethered by a easy batter of 1 cup of flour, three eggs, and one cup, or rather less, of sugar. The French model provides milk, which I discovered makes the batter softer. Some included baking powder, however I examined it with and with out it, and didn’t discover it to offer any notable raise. And a few embody a melted tablespoon or two of butter, which I see no motive to say no to.
The largest distinction is how the apples are minimize — skinny, very skinny. When you combine them with the batter, you possibly can simply pour it into the pan and shimmy the combination as flat as doable. It’s going to nonetheless look nice this manner, however you seemingly gained’t match all of it since they’re not as tightly packed. For a prettier look and a fuller cake, as seen right here, use clear palms to rearrange the apples barely overlapped across the pan and spiral them right into a flower within the heart, which I couldn’t resist. I completed mine with a easy apricot jam glaze, however my buddy David Lebovitz makes his with a salted caramel sauce, which might be unimaginable.
[Apologies if you were expecting this recipe in fall 2023 when I first teased it. I’m quite terrible at keeping to a schedule when there are newer, shinier recipes I want to chase next.]
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