Christmas Apple Cake

This cake smells and tastes like Christmas. It's a combination of delicious gingerbread and apple cake. If we could just add some cheesecake, it would be the perfect cake :D

You can, and really should, make the dough for the cake a little ahead of time, because it's quite hard after baking. Don't worry though, the layers soften once you spread the fillings between them. Still, baking the dough earlier shortens the preparation time.

Christmas apple cake

This makes quite a lot of dough, more than you need, so you can cut out the rest and make wonderful gingerbread cookies.

Instructions - Christmas Apple Cake:

Heat the honey, clarified butter, cocoa, 50 g of the sugar and all the spices in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Set aside to cool for about 15 minutes, then transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the baking soda, baking powder, eggs, cream and flour and knead into a sticky, somewhat loose dough. It should drip slowly off the spoon. If needed, add more flour. Set aside in a cool place for a few hours (or even days).

Bring the apples to a boil with the lemon juice, white wine, sugar and cinnamon. Mix the pudding powder with 1 tbsp of water and add it to the apples. Boil briefly and set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F).

Divide the dough into 2 parts. Roll one of them out to about 0.5-1 cm (it can't be too thick, because it will rise a bit more while baking) and cut out a circle 26 cm in diameter. Place it on a baking sheet and bake until the dough turns lightly golden (about 15 minutes). The browner it gets, the harder it will be.

Do the same with the second part of the dough, but before baking, cut it into 12 equal cake wedges. Let cool.

Soak the gelatin in cold water. Whip the cream until stiff with 20 g of the powdered sugar, the vanilla sugar and the seeds from the vanilla bean. Melt the gelatin and add it to the cream bit by bit, whipping constantly.

Place the cake base on a cake stand. Spread the cream over it, then evenly spread the cold apple filling on top, and finally arrange the dough triangles. Dust with powdered sugar and set aside in a cool place for at least an hour.

Enjoy!