This Dutch Apple Loaf is my kind of cake, soft and moist, and filled with juicy chunks of apple and pecan nuts. For a lovely hint of sweetness I have drizzled a delicious buttery icing glaze over the top. This is such a versatile recipe as it can be served with cream or crème fraîche as a dessert, or with your morning tea or coffee .
It is a great way to use up any apples you may have that are windfalls or those which are a little old and soft that are lurking in your fruit bowl. Although I always like to use the freshest ingredients, I hate wasting any fruit, when you watch and see how long they take to grow, and ripen. The beauty of nature in one juicy bite.
If you love apples, another recipe I have shared with you before is my friend Lee’s amazing Apple Crumble which can be made from tinned apples or by poaching fresh apples for a few minutes, before topping with a buttery crumble mix. It is one of those recipes that you can make at the last minute from a few groceries in your pantry. Quick, simple and delicious with ice cream.
“The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree’s, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent.” — Henry David Thoreau, Wild Apples
- 115 g (1/2cup) butter
- 200 g (1 cup) sugar
- 2 eggs
- 120 ml (1/2cup) milk
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 level tsp baking powder
- 440 gms (2 cups) flour
- 150 g (1 1/2cups) apple, diced
- 50 g (1/2 cup) pecans, chopped
- FOR THE TOPPING
- 40 g cold butter
- 60 g flour
- 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- FOR THE ICING GLAZE
- 1 Tablespoon melted butter
- 65 g (1/2 cup) icing sugar
- Dash of milk
- Dash of vanilla essence
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Preheat oven to 175ºC/350ºF
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Line a loaf pan with baking paper and grease with a non stick spray or butter
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Cream the butter and sugar in an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
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Mix the room temperature milk, eggs and vanilla together. Set aside
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Cut the apples into small pieces and set aside.
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Chop the nuts and set aside
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Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.
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Add the flour and the liquid mixtures to the creamed butter, starting with 1/3 of the flour, then liquid mixture, alternatively until it is finished, ending with the flour mixture. Do not overmix.
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Add the chopped nuts and apples with and mix with a spoon.
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Make the crumble topping by mixing the sugar, cinnamon and flour together and then cut the butter into small pieces and mix with a fork until crumbs form.
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Turn the loaf mixture into the prepared pan and top with the crumble. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the loaf.
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Whisk the vanilla glaze together and once the cake is cooked and completely cool then you can drizzle the glaze over.
10 Comments
This is also the cake I like. Not smothered in icing. Lovely
Can we see more if these cakes. They are so nice to slice rather than big chunks of sweet icing cakes
I love the tip that you can use up leftover apples. More often than not we have leftovers. Love the “Thoreau” saying.
Lovely, Ev! I Those apples are amazing! 🙂
Elizabeth it is so lovely to hear from you again. Hope you and your family are all well. Lots of love
As I’m from uk im used to measuring in grams so I would just like to say thank you for converting your recipes into grams. Looking forward to trying this one. Came across this site and loving it.
After baking the cake I realized that measures in grams doesn’t correspond with measures in cups, at least for flour and apples. I hope my cake doesn’t turn dry. Please check that for futures users.
Hi Maria – Did you use cups or the grams mentioned? I measure all my ingredients by weight so if you used the grams there will be no problem. USA and English measures are however slightly different. Also flour does not weigh the same as apples. I use this conversion
http://www.jsward.com/cooking/conversion.shtml
Hope your cake turned out ok. Regards Ev
For topping, combine the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over batter.
Hi Yvonne , in general you can use all purpose (AP) flour for all baked goods, cakes, muffins, pie crusts etc but I use Cake flour most of the time unless I am making bread. Cake flour and AP flour have less protein than bread flour so goods when baked are lighter and fluffier
Bread flour is used for bread because it has higher amounts of protein to produce lots of gluten. Gluten is the stringy strands that give bread dough its stretch and elasticity.
I hope this helps you. Take care and have a great day