I have mentioned on my previous (and first) post about my first baking adventures, including “cuca de banana”, a typical cake from the south of Brazil. The recipe I used is long lost, as I probably gave away the book that contained it before moving to Canada.
Luckily there is wonderful/terrible thing called the Internet, so I placed a search and ended up with an excessive number of recipes for the cake (changing bananas to apples, as it is cold and I was lazy to go out). Going through the ingredients in the top results and automatically discarding any that mentioned margarine, I locked on this one (link in Portuguese, but I’ll post it in English below).

No lemons were harmed in the making of this recipe -laziness to go out striking again. The recipe itself if very straightforward. Just add everything in the mixer following the right order, let the dough rise, cover with apples (or any fruit) and bake. As it is usual for me, I used less sugar than what the recipe asked for, so this cake could go well with either a nice cup of coffee or probably pork -if the caramel is removed. Speaking of caramel, that was my first attempt at it and as punishment, I’ll have to spend three hours a day this week reading the Larousse des Desserts by candlelight, whilst kneeling on corn. I guess I’ll have to try that again sometime.
And this is the final result. The topping is a bit bitter due to the caramel, but overall, I’d call it a success.

Recipe

Ingredients

5 grams of dry yeast
3/4 cups of water
10 tablespoons of sugar
1 egg
5 tablespoon of butter
2 cups of flour
5 grams of salt
Lemon zest
1 honeycrisp apple
Caramel*

Method

1. On the mixer’s bowl add the yeast to water. Let it rest for a couple of minutes and add the sugar. Leave it alone for 10 minutes.
2. Add the egg, butter, and lemon zest. Mix everything and start adding the flour with the salt little by little, until the dough is homogeneous, but not too firm.
3. Spread the dough in a greased and floured baking cake pan.
4. Let it grow for 30 to 50 minutes, go learn how to make proper caramel.
5. When the time is up, add the apples to the top, thinly sliced with any other ingredients of your choosing (nuts, caramel, raisins…)
6. Set the oven to 150 degrees Celsius (305 degrees Fahrenheit) and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.
7. Enjoy!

*To prevent ruining caramel for you, I am not giving my recipe.