Compressed Apple Cake - The FoodOlic recipes (2024)

Compressed Apple Cake is a lovely multilayer cake made of layered apple slices sweetened with brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg compressed on a bed of walnuts and cornflakes.

Compressed Apple Cake is a reversed apple cake, cooked slowly for2 hours; the released pectin from the apples will jellify the whole cake to make it hold perfectly. The result is a fantastic mouthful of apples with a thin crust of walnut,sugar-free whole-grain cornflakes (or graham) with a touch of flour, butter and brown sugar. This thin base gives the dessert a crunch, but this dish’s magic finds itself inits bold apple flavour and fun light texture.

I usually try to avoid flaky pastries knowing it’s filled with butter, so this base is a great solution; plus, walnuts and apples are just a perfect match. It is a sweet cake made with little sugar because apples are already filled, so it is a pretty healthy dessert.

What Kind of Apples?

For this recipe, you’ll need apples that are not breaking too quickly…so no mealy apples. Any type of apple that holds good when cut 1 mm thin is excellent for this recipe. This way, you’ll see the many layers, cut through them with the fork, and feel each piece of apple, which is as satisfying as cracking the caramelized top from a “creme brulee.” Otherwise, with a mealy or floury textured apple, you’ll get a purée and won’t get the same result. I’ve used a well-known “pink lady” apple for this particular recipe, but you choose the one you prefer as long as it’s not too acidic or mealy.

The Technique

The technique used here is a slow and long cooking process that will compress the apple layers and hold them perfectly together. For the first half of the cooking process, you’llneed to double-wrap the mould containing the apples in aluminum foil to prevent the steam from escaping. This way, you’ll get all the juices (apple, brandyand butter) to merge to perfection with the cinnamon and nutmeg. Also, the pectin from the apple will activate and jellify the cake, making it hold to perfection.

In the second half of the cooking session, we’ll discard the aluminum foil to let all the juices evaporate and concentrate the flavours. By then, the apples had lost about 1/2 of the height they originally were. We’ll finish with the fine walnut base thirty minutes before the end. Once the cooking is done, it’s important not to reverse the cake immediately; it needs to jellify and cool down before, so I suggest waiting an hour before reversing the cake and serving.

Other Dessert Recipes

• BLUEBERRY CHEESECAKE CUPS
• STRAWBERRY CRUMBLE
• VANILLA SPONGE CAKE WITH STRAWBERRIES

So let’s make this layered apple cake!