Applesauce Cake
This delicious Applesauce Cake is perfect for fall with wonderful apple flavor. We've frosted it with a heavenly, easy-to-make spiced cream cheese frosting!
Servings: 15 servings
Ingredients
- 8 oz Cream Cheese, softened (We use one package cream cheese, full fat)
- 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened (168g total)
- 2 cups granulated sugar (400g)
- 4 large eggs, room temperature (to save time you can warm them in a bowl of very warm water for 5 min)
- 3 cups Cake Flour- see Notes for substitution (342g)
- 1 teaspoon Baking powder (4g)
- 1 ½ teaspoons Baking soda (7g)
- ½ teaspoon Salt (3g)
- 1 ½ teaspoons Apple Pie Spice (5g)
- 1 ¼ cup Applesauce (312g)
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract (4g)
- ⅓ cup Vegetable oil (67g) we used canola oil
Topping
- We added a sprinkling of toffee bits as a topping (We used Heath toffee bits)
Caramel Sauce
- ½ stick unsalted butter (57g)
- 1 cup light brown sugar (packed into measuring cup) (217g)
- ½ cup heavy cream (126g)
- ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
- 1 Tablespoon light corn syrup (18g)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube pan or bundt pan. (Ours was a 15 cup pan with 12 cup baking capacity. This recipe makes 8 cups of batter.)
- In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, apple pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
- In another bowl combine the vegetable oil, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter, cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.
- Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
- Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the egg yolk has blended.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the applesauce mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (We did 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet). Slightly increase the mixer speed just until combined.
- Scoop the batter into the prepared bundt pan.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes. Check your cake at about 40 minutes using a long wooden skewer or a toothpick to determine doneness. Bake until the toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Baking times can vary! It may take longer in your oven.
- Allow the cake to cool, in the pan, on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
- This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of batter.
Caramel Glaze
- Using a medium size saucepan (deep enough to prevent boil over) melt the butter over medium heat.
- Add the brown sugar and the remaining ingredients and heat on medium high heat.
- Stir to blend, try to keep mixture off the sides of the pan. Once the mixture begins to boil, reduce the heat to low.
- Simmer for 6 minutes, checking often to make sure that it is not going to boil over. It should still be bubbling. After 6 minutes, remove from heat.
- Keep in mind that the caramel with thicken up a bit as it cools. You can pour it into a long glass casserole dish if you want it to cool more quickly. We often refrigerate to cool it off as well.
- Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce. It can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container up to 2 weeks.