Experiment: Wicked Simple Apple Coffee Cake

3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup plus 2 tbls milk
2 apples
1 tsp vanilla
3 tsps (or so) ground cinnamon
3 tsps (or so) sugar

Butter an 8x8 pan and line it with a parchment sling. Preheat the oven to 350. Peel, core and chop the apples. In a bowl, combine the chopped apples with one (of the 3) tsps of cinnamon and sugar. Set them aside. Cream together the butter and 3/4 cup of sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla, mix to combine. Add the flour, salt and baking powder and mix that in well. Add the milk and mix for a couple minutes. Pour of any juices the apples have put out and fold them into the batter. Pour the batter in the prepared pan and sprinkle the remaining cinnamon and sugar on top. Bake till a toothpick comes out clean or with a few crumbs, about 35-45 minutes.

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So I had some apples that needed using. Plus those duck eggs that I wanted to make a cake out of. An apple coffee cake seemed in order. I was feeling lazy though and didn't want to make struesel. Now, I love struesel but it can be a pain in the ass. Then I remembered reading in a Cooks Illustrated (I think) that you can get a decent topping with just cinnamon and sugar and decided to try it out. The main cake part is just a half batch of cocoa ripple ring, since that cake is pretty hardy and could handle the fruit. Although I also took some steps to reduce the amount of liquid the apples would put out, but we'll get to that later. Unless you cheated and read the recipe first. Which you probably did. So we'll just get right to it then.

First, prep an 8x8 pan. Butter it up and then put a parchment paper sling in there. The sling is great if you want to take the cake out of the pan before cutting it. It's not really necessary, but it's kind of fun and makes things a lot easier. You should also start macerating your apples in a teaspoon or so of sugar and cinnamon.I only used one apple, but I wish I had done it with two. Now you want to cream your butter and sugar. Then add the eggs and vanilla. Duck eggs, baby. Look at those yolks! See how dark that is? That means rich taste kids. Because it's almost all fat. Yeah. Next the dry ingedients, then the milk. Mix it for several minutes. Now you want to pour off any liquid that the apples put out. All that liquid that came out of them is moisture that isn't going into the cake. This helps keep it from getting gummy. The macerating might even be something you want to start a half hour or so before you get the batter ready, but I didn't have any problems. Course, I also only used one apple. What to do with all that macerating liquid you ask? Well... I just drank it. Mmmm, appley.Anyway, fold in the apples and pour it all into the prepped pan. Now sprinkle the top with a couple teaspoons of cinnamon and sugar. I didn't measure it, but next time I'm going to add more. At least more cinnamon. Maybe even totally cover the top with it, but I'm not sure yet. Now it's just bakies and there it is. A wicked simple apple coffee cake. It was very good. Sure, streusel is a better topping, but it's nowhere near as easy. And this was actually quite nice, it came out a little crispy and had plenty of flavor, even if didn't have any body to speak of. So, if you're in a rush(or just feeling lazy, heh), this topping will do just fine. But if I have the time and patience, I'm going to make streusel.