Ready to flex your fall baking skills? Then you’ve come to the right place. Featuring three layers of tender, lightly spiced apple cider cake sandwiched with apple pie filling, buttery crumble, and salted caramel, this apple crumble cake recipe will delight and impress anyone who’s lucky enough to snag a piece.
The key to making this cake is to look at it as many smaller recipes rather than one huge project. Of the four made-from-scratch components—cake, apple filling, crumble, and cream cheese frosting—at least three (if not all!) of them can be made a day or even two days before assembling and serving the cake. Make your life easier by cooking the apples and making the frosting on day one, baking the cakes and crumble on day two, and assembling and serving the cake on day three. As long as all components are cooled thoroughly and wrapped tightly or stored in airtight containers in the refrigerator, they’ll stay plenty fresh overnight. And you’ll be able to assemble the cake MUCH easier if most of the elements are well chilled.
Assembling a multi-layered cake like this is more about basic construction skills than it is about fine pastry skills: Each layer, whether it’s cake, frosting, or filling, will impact the cake’s overall structural integrity. Don’t be intimidated, but work through the cake build carefully, constantly assessing. Is the dam of frosting around the edge thick and tall enough to hold in the apples and crumble? Is that frosting getting too warm? You may need to pop the half-built cake (and frosting) in the refrigerator for an hour to chill it down.
Depending on your skills, the temperature of your kitchen, and the finish you want to achieve, you might be able to build and finish the entire cake all at once, but for most people (including me!), I recommend building the cake and applying a thin layer of frosting—this is called a crumb coat—all over before popping it in the fridge to chill for at least two hours. Once the cake is really cold, you’ll be able to add that final layer of frosting more easily and get a much neater look.
Did you try making this? Let us know how it went in the comments!
