Sourdough Apple Cake

Health coinsures and picky eaters unite to rave over this easy old-fashioned sourdough apple cake. It uses on-hand ingredients, healthy oils, and natural sweeteners without sacrificing taste, or moisture levels. The optional sourdough or sourdough discard adds a tanginess that makes it feel like you’re in your great-great grandma’s kitchen!

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Below is the printable recipe card. If you’re interested in more details, scroll down!

The original version of this recipe is my Mother’s, thank you, Mama. I recreated the recipe with some simple swaps in the name of nutrition.

We don’t use canola oil in our house so that was the first thing I swapped. If you’re interested in why we don’t use canola oil, here is a fantastic article from the Weston A. Price Foundation with studies included. It talks in-depth about why you should cut these seed oils out. I try not to worry about anything too much, but we practice the 80/20 rule in our house. 80 percent of the time we have a clean diet, cook from scratch, and take the time to source good quality ingredients. The other 20 percent of the time we don’t worry about it. For example, if we are out with friends or family, we eat what they serve. If someone brings food to our house, we indulge. Life is all about balance, wouldn’t you agree?

In our farmhouse kitchen, we stock up with certain ingredients that have proven to make us feel good, and honestly, it’s not hard. We stay away from the oils that Dr. Kate Shanahan, family physician and NY Times Bestselling author, refers to as, The Hateful Eight, she has a helpful list of good versus bad fats. There are a variety of healthy fats and oils that work for all recipes. For this recipe, I used a combination of grass-fed browned butter and avocado oil.

Best Source Of Fats and Oils:

• Virgin Coconut Oil
• Grass-Fed Butter/Ghee
• Unrefined Avocado Oil
• Lard/Tallow

This month I’m getting myself into a routine of baking for joy. I recently read a quote by Brianna Wiest, where she says “Your habits create your mood, and your mood is a filter for which you experience life.” I’m in the mood to feed my people. My heart wants the house to smell like hot apples and sugar. To elevate the home with a simple treat, to create a mood through which my whole family can experience the sunny sides of life. These small little gestures, end up being the big things at the end of the day.

Take another 20 minutes (dishes included) and watch how this apple cake makes everyone’s heart sing. Or, just for the hell of it, take the cake, still warm, to your neighbor’s house. Then, stand back and feel the love.

Why the Bundt pan is important for this apple cake recipe

This cake is made in a Bundt pan, also known as a fluted tube pan. I chose the Bundt pan for optimal moisture levels. The tube or ring in the middle allows for faster and more even heat distribution when baking larger volumes of batter. What you’re left with is a deep, thick, and moist cake. Bundt pans also lend themselves to more intricately designed cakes with fluted edges. Leaving you with beautiful patterns and imprints. They can be unique in shape, creating visually stunning cakes without having to have superb cake decorating skills.

What is the point of browned butter?

Browning your butter is optional, but if I could give away one pearl of wisdom, it would be to brown your butter baby! Brown butter also known as Beurre noisette, in French this translates to, butter browned to the color of noisette or “hazelnuts.” Beurre Noisette gives a richer more delicious flavor than melted butter. As soon as your butter is melted, allow it to turn golden, and stir constantly to disperse the nutty flavor.

Tools you may need:

• One large bowl
• One medium-sized bowl
• A whisk
• A rubber spatula
• A sifter (optional)
• Bundt Pan
• Measuring Cups
• Measuring Spoons

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of Unrefined Avocado Oil– or virgin coconut oil
• 1/2 cup/1 stick Butter– Grass-Fed, melted and browned
• 1 cup of Sucanat or maple sugar– We do not use white sugar in our home. This is another ingredient where I don’t ever budge on quality. It’s the difference between blood sugar spikes OR a healthier version that adds a depth of flavor and vitamins and minerals with the molasses still intact.
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup Sour Cream
• 1/2 cup Sourdough Starter, active or discard
• 3 Apples– peeled and sliced
• 2 tsp.– Vanilla
• 2 cups of flour + a 1/4 cup for prepping pan
• 1 tsp. Baking Soda
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder
• 1 tsp. Good Quality Salt, I love this Pink Himalayan sea salt or this Celtic Sea Salt
• 2 tsp. Cinnamon, I prefer Ceylon cinnamon

Other Optional Ingredients:

• Chopped and toasted pecans
• Raisins or golden raisins
• dried cranberries
• Have fun and play around with these add-ins!

How to make the perfect old-fashioned sourdough apple cake:

Step One: Preheat Oven and Prep your Bundt cake pan

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Get your butter melting and/or browning in a small saucepan on med-low heat. This should take about 5 minutes. WATCH CAREFULLY! Next, I butter my pan taking the time to get all the nooks and crannies of the pan. Then I take 1/4 cup of flour and sprinkle it into the pan, knocking the outside of the pan and rotating to get an even layer of flour over the butter.

Step Two: Prepping Apples

Peel and chop your apples. You can slice or chop them finer or a rougher chop. Just know you’ll get a different texture throughout the cake depending on how you decide to do this. I like to let the boys take the lead on apple chopping. Apples are a great way for little ones to practice knife skills. Practice with caution, and know when YOUR child is ready to use a knife.

Step Three: Mix wet ingredients

Cream your oil, cooled brown butter, sugar, and eggs together in a large bowl. Then add sour cream, and sourdough starter (the sourdough starter is optional). Mix with a whisk until smooth

Step Four: Mix dry ingredients

Into your medium-sized bowl sift flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon.

Step Five: Adding wet ingredients to dry Ingredients

Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and with your spatula mix and scrape the sides of your bowl until just combined and no more flour is present.

Step Six: Stirring in additional ingredients

Add chopped apples and any of the optional ingredients listed above.

Step Seven: Pouring batter into the pan

Step Eight: Bake

Put the cake in the oven on the middle rack at 350 for 40 minutes, checking after 30 minutes for doneness. When it’s done the house will smell divine, and the cake will be golden on the outside.

Step Nine: Cool and Remove

When you are sure it is done, remove it from the oven and place it on a cooling rack. Please be patient and let it cool completely before removing the cake from the Bundt Pan.

Step Ten: Sugar and dress

Turn your cake out onto a cutting board and cut into 2-3 inch slices. I like to take confectioner sugar in my sifter and sprinkle it over the sliced apple cakes. Enjoy!

Tips for baking your apple cake:

• Prepping your pans is the most important part of baking a cake, and where everything can wrong if you don’t prep your pans correctly. If you want to grease your pan, I use butter. Put a pad of room-temperature butter in the bottom, and rub it all around making sure you get every inch of the pan covered. I even get the rim of the pan. The boys like to do this part. If you are melting butter for your cake batter, you could also dip a pastry brush right into the saucepan and then brush the butter into your cake pan. If the butter clumps, use a pastry brush or artist’s brush to even it out, which will prevent bubbles in the crust. The goal is to get that cake to slide right out and be fully intact.
• Next, take a 1/4 cup of flour and throw it in your pan. Then, over the sink move the pan around hitting the edges so there is a nice even layer of flour stuck over the butter throughout the whole pan.
• You can add all the dry ingredients right into the sifter. This way all the ingredients get nicely mixed and sifted into the flour.

What’s the difference between an active sourdough starter and a discard?

Sourdough discard is a sourdough starter that has not been fed, rises, and then falls back down. When a sourdough starter is fed, it is nice and bubbly and doubles in size. Once the starter has fed off the flour and water, the bubbles of the active starter will release and come back down. This would be considered an unfed sourdough starter. So you can either feed it or discard it in a recipe. It adds a tanginess in flavor. Active Sourdough Starter is freshly fed, bubbly, and active (you can see movement), rises to twice it’s original size, and it’s ready to give rise to a dough.

If you tried this old-fashioned apple cake recipe, let me know how you liked it in the comments below. What other recipes would you like to see? See you soon!

Here are more Sourdough recipes from our farmhouse!

• Sourdough Boule
• Sourdough Ciabatta Rolls
• Sourdough Focaccia
• Sourdough Breadcrumbs
• Sourdough Croutons
• Sourdough Sandwich Rolls
• No Knead Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls
• Sourdough Banana Bread
• Sourdough Upside Cake