Apple Cranberry Cake-Pie
I had so much fun doing my Week of Cupcakes back in August and my Week of Pumpkin in October, that I’m back for another Week of… This time I’m featuring cranberries! Until last year, I had never eaten a cranberry. Fresh or dried. Now I eat them all the time.
I remember seeing this recipe show up when TWD did it. I looked amazing so I had it bookmarked. Then we decided to have friends over to check out the new kitchen (yes, I realize I promised updated pictures a long time ago, I’ll get on that…)
Since we were hosting friends for dinner, I wanted to make a special dessert. I love the flavor combo of the apple and cranberries in this and the dough is great. It’s just like it sounds, somewhere between a cake and a pie.
I made a 1/2 batch and used an 8×8 pan. I also served this with ice cream. Then Hubby and I ate leftovers for breakfast for a couple days. If you like apple pie and cranberries, I highly recommend making this!
Russian Grandmothers' Apple Pie-Cake
Ingredients:
For The Dough
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Juice of 1 lemon
3 1/4 - 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
For The Apples
10 medium apples, all one kind or a mix
Squirt of fresh lemon juice
1 cup moist, plump raisins - I used dried cranberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Sugar, preferably decorating (coarse) sugar, for dusting
Directions:
To Make The Dough
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 3 minutes more. Reduce the mixer speed to low, add the baking powder and salt and mix just to combine. Add the lemon juice - the dough will probably curdle, but don't worry about it. Still working on low speed, slowly but steadily add 3 1/4 cups of the flour, mixing to incorporate it and scraping down the bowl as needed. The dough is meant to be soft, but if you think it looks more like a batter than a dough at this point, add the extra 1/4 cup flour. (The dough usually needs the extra flour.) When properly combined, the dough should almost clean the sides of the bowl.
Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each half into a rectangle. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or for up to 3 days. (The dough can be wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 2 months; defrost overnight in the refrigerator.)
To Make The Apples
Peel and core the apples and cut into slices about 1/4 inch thick; cut the slices in half crosswise if you want. Toss the slices in a bowl with a little lemon juice - even with the juice, the apples may turn brown, but that's fine - and add the raisins. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together, sprinkle over the apples and stir to coat evenly. Taste an apple and add more sugar, cinnamon, and/or lemon juice if you like.
Getting Ready to Bake
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Generously butter a 9x12-inch baking pan (Pyrex is good) and place it on a baking shee tlined with parchment or a silicone mat.
Remove the dough from the fridge. If it is too hard to roll and it cracks, either let it sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes or give it a few bashes with your rolling pin to get it moving. Once it's a little more malleable, you've got a few choices. You can roll it on a well-floured work surface or roll it between sheets of plastic wrap or wax paper. You can even press or roll out pieces of the dough and patch them together in the pan - because of the baking powder in the dough, it will puff and self-heal under the oven's heat. Roll the dough out until it is just a little larger all around than your pan and about 1/4 inch thick - you don't want the dough to be too thin, because you really want to taste it. Transfer the dough to the pan. If the dough comes up the sides of the pan, that's fine; if it doesn't that's fine too.
Give the apples another toss in the bowl, then turn them into the pan and, using your hands, spread them evenely across the bottom.
Roll out the second piece of dough and position it over the apples. Cut the dough so you've got a 1/4 to 1/2 inch overhang and tuck the excess into the sides of the pan, as though you were making a bed. (If you don't have that much overhang, just press what you've got against the sides of the pan.)
Brush the top of the dough lightly with water and sprinkle sugar over the dough. Using a small sharp knife, cut 6 to 8 evenly spaced slits in the dough.
Bake for 65 to 80 minutes, or until the dough is a nice golden brown and the juices from the apples are bubbling up through the slits. Transfer the baking pan to a cooling rack and cool to just warm or to room temperature. You'll be tempted to taste it sooner, but I think the dough needs a little time to rest.
Recipe from Dorie Greenspan, as seen on A Whisk and A Spoon
Check out my week of Cranberries here.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Raspberries are my very favorite food on the planet and this looks absolutely divine. Thanks for sharing this!
Its my husband birthday on Fri I might try to talk him into having this cake for it.
awesome work, Jen! It sounds delicious and looks gorgeous. I’m totally jealous of your border-piping skills too.
Beautiful cake! This is very similar to our wedding cake, I may just have to try it!
It looks beautiful and sounds delicious. I’ll have to try this one!
This looks absolutely terrific! Great job on the assembly and decoration!
really beautiful cake! and raspberries are one of my favorite fruits ever! i love the little sacs together with the crunchy seeds. hee.
Holy beautiful! this cake is quite elegant and delicious looking! I love raspberries with cake.
Jen this cake is so so beautiful! It reminds me of the triple berry cake from Sweet Lady Jane here in LA. If an opportunity every arises for me to make a layer cake (I have the same problem – it’s hard to find people to help finish it!) I will definitely try this one.
You did a beautiful job with the piping. Gorgeous.
We should be best friends hahaha. We have the same go-to white cake recipe, and we both made layered cakes this weekend! Your cake is BEAUTIFUL! You have every right to brag. You did an excellent job on the piping and decorating. It looks professional!
I added lemon extract to my strawberry frosting on my strawberry cake (which came from Bridget’s recipe), and I could taste hints of lemon. I think the extract and some lemon zest would work well.
I must make this cake!! I am 100% certain that I would like it because we have similar tastes.
Now I need to look at your overdose cake to compare it to my overload cake.
Lemon and raspberries sounds like a perfect flavor combo. Your cake looks beautiful!
OH wow, I started drooling as soon as I saw the pic. SO pretty and looks delish! Will def. have to try this one… 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
This is so, so pretty! And obviously looks delicious too. Raspberries are one of my favorite parts of spring!
Sues
I don’t think you’re bragging! I would be proud of a beautiful cake like this one.
Looks delicous!
http://www.brisbanebaker.blogspot.com
beautiful!! Great decorating job!
This cake looks awesome and my mouth is watering looking at the picture right now.
beautiful cake!
This cake is SO, SOOO beautiful! I love it!!!
Looks beautiful, I love layer cakes!
you say something about videos from youtube? can you share the the links?
vertigoxcured – I updated the post with links to the youtube videos. Sorry about that.
I made this for Mother’s Day and it was a huge hit! Thanks for sharing. I added the juice of the zested lemon and an extra cup of confectioners’ sugar to the buttercream and managed to get a nice lemony tang.
I cant believe this is your first frosting coated cake. So beautifully done. And also note…that 4 layers with fruit filling without cake sliding all over the place is not a normal for first timers in that department. Kudos… you got the cake decorating skills Ma’am.
am making this cake right now, and i must ask about the proportions of flour to liquid. it seems off. i made the recipe exactly as written and it was a pool of liquid. i had a similar recipe for a white cake which called for 2-3/4 flour and only 4 egg whites + 1 whole egg ( similar), so i added another 1/2 cup flour and it was still liquidy. it took 30 mins. to bake, not 23-25. will see how it turns out. the only good part is rubbing the grated lemon zest with the sugar, although i could not taste much lemon in the batter. by the looks of the layers, i would recommend 8″ pans as the layers are quite thin. all in all a big disappointment. glad i planned ahead and will make a different recipe.
beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:27 pm
Sorry to hear this recipe didn’t work out for you. This batter was very thin going in to the oven.
Does this cake keep well? i just made three 6″ cakes, which I’ll freeze in preparation for making a little layer cake on Sunday (a top-tier wedding cake replacement for our one year anniversary, after Hurricane Sandy ruined the real one.) But I also made two dozen cupcakes with the batter. I’m planning to bring one dozen to a dinner party tomorrow and the next dozen to a party on Wednesday. Any tips for the cupcakes? Should I freeze them, or just leave them out til I’m ready to frost? Would appreciate any suggestions! Thanks.
beantownbaker — April 23rd, 2013 @ 7:48 am
I haven’t made this cake into cupcakes before. But in general, cupcakes are fine for a couple days. If it’s more than 2-3 days, I’d go ahead and freeze them, then frost them the day before you want to serve them.
Would it be advantageous to whip the egg whites first, and fold them into the batter at the end? It might help with the thin batter issue, and I have some recipes for white cake that call for whites whipped into soft peaks. I am making this cake for a baby shower this weekend, so I will let you know how this technique works, unless the author has an opinion against.
beantownbaker — June 10th, 2013 @ 12:27 pm
I have made this cake, or a variation of the cake, multiple times as it is written without any issues. I know some cake recipes do have the cake whites whipped and folded in at the end. If you try it, please let me know how it goes.
If you could email me with a few pointers on how you made your blog site look this cool, I would be thankful!
Going to endeavor to make this for my husband’s birthday next weekend. I haven’t made a cake in ages, but I like challenges!!! Hopefully it will go well as his parents are coming into town for his birthday (yikes!) I hope it has a nice lemon flavor because he loves lemon. Wish me luck!!!
beantownbaker — September 27th, 2013 @ 3:54 pm
I hope he enjoys it. The cake definitely has a lemon flavor. If you wanted to go super lemony, you could use lemon curd instead of raspberry curd for the filling!
Cake looks beautiful. However, each cake was an only an inch thick so was confused how to possibly cut it in half to make four layers. So after everything was cleaned up, I had to make a second round of this. The puree was tasty and plenty of it. The Frosting was delicious and plenty also. The cake itself tasted good with hint of lemon, but did not rise much at all and it had a very rubbery texture and very dense. I agree the batter was thin when I poured in pans, but it was not fluffy and light by any means after it was baked. I appreciated making it, but not a fav for me.
I know this is an old post, but I had to comment after making it for the first time yesterday. This is a lovely cake! The only downside, for me, was that the lemon flavor was lighter than I thought it would be. I ended up topping it with some toasted almonds and fresh raspberries, and serving it with homemade coconut ice cream.
*Note: My layers came out quite thin. They were both only a little over an inch thick, and the batter itself was a slightly thick/fluffy consistency. That being said, I was able to torte them without difficulty and the finished cake came out to a little over 3 inches.