Hazelnut Honey Spice Cake with Caramelized Apples

This upside-down cake is all the good flavors of fall in one place.

Traditionally Jewish people eat apples dipped in honey on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). It’s a way to hope for a sweet New Year. I didn’t dip an apple in honey until some time in my 20s, when I met fully Jewish people, nothing like the Jew-ish family I grew up in, who celebrated any Jewish holiday by eating rugelach from the grocery store.

My first encounter with plastic-wrapped bricks of honey cake was about that time too. Honey cake is another traditional way of getting into the sweet New Year groove, come High Holiday time. I’m sure there of some of you out there who taste that sticky-sweet cake and think warm thoughts of Bubbe, but not me.

I knew there must be better ways of making honey cake out there. At the start of the Ukraine war, I made a traditional Ukrainian honey poppyseed cake and I quickly realized what a fool I was. Honey cake was a many splendored thing, and my weird little baker’s brain got scheming. How to innovate? Zingerman’s, the great deli out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sells a honey cake made with rye flour and black tea as an homage to the foods of the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews. It’s genius. You can find a recipe here. Or order one here.

I decided to create a honey cake with more Viennese flair in honor of my dad’s birthplace and used hazelnut flour. I also decided to turn it into an upside down cake because I wanted a honey apple element, so I made a caramel with honey, and layered a mix of Gala and Granny Smith apples.

This cake is not just some one-trick dessert that’s only good for Rosh Hashanah. No, no! Thanks to generous amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg, this here honey cake has serious spice cake overtones, which means you can be serving this cake from now through Halloween, Guy Fawkes Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Holiday Pot Luck that you quietly dread every year.

This is the lush caramel color you’re going for.

Notes on the cake:

• Choose apples that hold their shape when cooked. I used a mix of Granny Smith and Gala. Golden Delicious and Macintosh would be bad choices, as they tend towards mush when cooked. Red Delicious are a waste of apple all around. Yes, I said that.

• Don’t like spice? Leave it out altogether or make it more subtle. Or, boost the spice quotient with a teaspoon of powdered ginger or 1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamom.

• I found hazelnut flour at my local ShopRite grocery store in the big display of Bob’s Red Mill products. It is expensive, for which I apologize, but I promise many very good recipes that use hazelnut flour in the coming months.

• Need to make your own hazelnut flour? Roast hazelnuts at 325 degrees for until they turn very light brown. Remove the warm hazelnuts to a clean kitchen towel and rub the skins off the nuts. Let the nuts cool completely, then pulse the hazelnuts with 1 tablespoon sugar until the nuts are ground fine. Stop before it turns to nut butter. Which is not the most helpful direction, but be cautious.

• Make measuring honey easier: Use a neutral oil to lightly coat the inside of your liquid measuring cup before you measure the honey.

  

Please click the little heart-shaped “like” button at the top of the page to make the algorithm elves happy. It shouldn’t just be Elon Musk that games the system!

Caramelized Upside Honey Cake: printable recipe!

401KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Upside Down Hazelnut Honey Spice Cake with Caramelized Apples

makes 1 9” cake

What You’ll Need:

For the caramel:

3 medium apples (I used 2 Granny Smith and 1 Gala)

fresh lemon juice (to prevent apples from browning)

4 tablespoons (57 grams) unsalted butter

1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar

1/4 cup (85 grams) runny honey (not creamed honey)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

For the cake:

1/2 cup (71 grams) all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (71 grams) hazelnut flour

3 tablespoons corn starch

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated preferred)

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar

12 tablespoons butter (169 grams), room temperature

1/4 cup (127 grams) runny honey

3 large eggs, room temperature

What You’ll Do:

Prep the pan and oven:

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F/180 C.

2. Butter a 9” cake pan. Cut a 9” circle of parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan with it. Butter the parchment paper.

Prepare the apples:

1. Peel and core the apples. Cut the apples into 1/8” slices and toss with fresh lemon juice to prevent them from browning while you make the caramel.

Make the caramel:

1. In a medium sauce pan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Stir in the honey and sugar and keep stirring. The mixture will begin to bubble in a vaguely threatening way. Don’t stop stirring, and definitely don’t put your spatula down and work through today’s Wordle. Slowly the butter mixture will turn from a light yellow to a light brown. At this point the caramel can quickly go from an appealing caramel color to an ominous dark brown, so remove it from the heat. Stir in the vanilla and salt—stand back, as the mixture may spit a little.

2. Pour the molten caramel into the prepared cake pan. Lay the apple slices on top of the caramel in a decorative pattern. Set aside.

Make the cake:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the hazelnut flour, all-purpose flour, corn starch, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

2. Using a stand or hand mixer, cream the butter, honey and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beater(s) frequently.

3. Add the eggs, one at a time and mix until blended. Don’t worry if the mixture curdles a wee bit.

4. Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until the flour is just absorbed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beater(s) and then give the batter one last, but exciting 5-second spin on medium-high speed.

5. Spoon the batter over the apples and gently spread the batter evenly to the pan edges.

6. Check the cake after 30 minutes. If the center still wiggles slightly, turn the heat down to 325 degrees F and continue baking for 5 to 10 minutes or until the center of the cake bounces back when lightly touched with a finger (preferably yours).

7. Let the cake cool on the counter for about 15 minutes. Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan to loosen any sticky bits. Lay a large plate over the top of the pan and invert. Rap the bottom of the pan a few times. A hollow sound should indicate that the cake has slid onto the plate. Slowly raise the pan off, remove the parchment circle and rearrange any apples that are not looking their best.

8. Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped cream. This is probably best made on the morning before you serve it, although 24 hours in advance would be fine too. You can reheat it in a low oven to bring the caramel back to full stickiness.

Please enjoy, and if you can, please consider giving a gift subscription to my substack.

This substack is a reader-supported publication. If you’re able, paying for a subscription helps pay for jars and jars of honey necessary for recipe testing and other groceries necessary for recipe-testing and recipe development. Also, it supports me—a freelance writer. The pay scale for journalists and writers has not kept up with the cost of living. That’s why having a substack newsletter has become such a terrific venue for so many writers. Best of all, however, it puts me, Bosco, Calvin and Clyde in touch with our readers like never before. Thank you.

Can’t afford a subscription? Do the next best thing and give free subscriptions to all your friends. The more the merrier.