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Danish Apple Cake
Take twelve large, juicy apples, pare and core as for pie. Mix three cups fine bread crumbs, a little sugar and cinnamon. Grease a deep cake mold, sprinkle with crumbs a little thicker at the bottom, then a layer of crumbs, put a little bit of butter over crumbs, then apples, and so forth until all is used. Bake in a moderate oven two hours. When cold serve with whipped cream.
This is a layered crumb-and-apple pudding baked in a mold, not a cake in the modern sense. The original leaves butter and sugar to judgment, so a few numbers help.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F. Two hours at that heat is not a misprint: the mass of raw apple is deep, and the crumbs need time to absorb the juice and set.
- The crumbs are the hingeUse dry, fine crumbs from stale white bread, not soft fresh crumbs, which turn to paste. Danish aeblekage is generally made with crumbs fried in butter with sugar and cinnamon; this recipe does not call for that step, but browned crumbs hold their texture against the juice.
- Twelve large applesThat is roughly 4 to 5 lb pared and cored, sliced thin. A firm cooking apple that keeps some shape is better here than a soft eater.
- "Deep cake mold"A 3 to 4 quart charlotte mold, souffle dish or deep straight-sided casserole; the raw apple and crumbs fill more than you expect before they settle. Avoid a springform pan; the fruit throws a lot of liquid over two hours.
- Unmeasured butter and sugarFigure 4 to 6 tablespoons butter in total and 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar mixed through the crumbs, adjusted to how tart the apples are. Cinnamon to taste, about a teaspoon.
- Serving coldCooling is structural, not just a preference; warm from the oven it will slump. Chill it several hours and serve spooned from the dish rather than risking a turn-out, with lightly sweetened or plain whipped cream.
- YieldEight to ten servings from a full 3 quart mold.
Danish æblekage is usually a chilled assembly of stewed apple layered with butter-fried breadcrumbs and cream, served in a bowl rather than baked; this version, baked slowly in a mold and served cold, is closer to an English apple charlotte or brown betty. The breadcrumb foundation belongs to a long thrift tradition in Northern European cooking, where stale bread stood in for the flour, butter and sugar of a proper cake.