This apple cake is my nonna Maria’s recipe. She would often make it as a dessert following Sunday lunch. My mom tells me that during apple picking season, my grandmother would buy big crates of apples and store them in the cold room. The apples were cheap and would last for months. One day, she decided to toss some leftover apples into a simple cake recipe she had on hand. The cake became a family favourite and was passed around via word of mouth. Everyone added their own spin to the recipe.

Like many women of that generation, my nonna never wrote down her recipes. So when I went searching for it a few years ago, no one remembered the exact recipe. Thankfully, my grandmother’s sister, zia Lucia, did write a semblance of a recipe down. The handwritten, yellowed recipe card she gave me consisted of a list of ingredients, but no measurements or instructions. I based my original recipe on this and the memories I had of my mom making this cake for us growing up. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a solid apple cake!

Recently, however, there has been a break in my quest to uncover my nonna’s original recipe! My cousin Terry was rummaging through some of her old recipe books and came across a recipe for my nonna’s cake that she had jotted down sometime in the 1980s. She shared it with me and it included — excited gasp — a full list of ingredients and measurements! My cousin and I got baking, tweaked the recipe a little, and came up with this new and improved version of nonna Maria’s apple cake.

Ingredients:

• 6 apples, peeled and sliced into small cubes (I use a mix of Cortland and Granny Smith)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I use olive oil)
• 1/2 cup buttermilk or Greek yogurt (fat free is fine)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• powdered sugar (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F and generously grease a bundt or ring cake pan.
2. In a bowl, toss the chopped apples with the lemon juice and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy, about two minutes.
5. Next, mix in the buttermilk, oil and vanilla.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until fully combined. Stir in the apples.
7. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in centre of cake comes out clean.
8. Cool cake completely on wire rack and dust with powdered sugar, if desired.