Crock Pot Applesauce Cake

I’ve finally started delving into the world of sweets in our Whole Foods journey …and boy is it fun! Barry is relieved. I think he thought I’d never make another dessert. Now I’ve got dessert ideas churning around in my head all day long. It’s a happy place to be. Applesauce Cake has always been a favorite of mine. I like the strong cinnamon flavor and I love how it pairs so well with vanilla ice cream. Seriously – what doesn’t pair well with vanilla ice cream? I tried this version in the crock pot because I thought it would help for the holidays since it would free up your oven for doing other various things – like baking turkeys or ham. It turned out great! Let’s crock.

Since you want to be able to lift your cake out, you need to line the bottom of your crock (5-6 quart) with parchment paper. I found this awesome unbleached parchment paper at Earth Fare. These days I’m attempting to avoid things that are white: flour, sugar, zits, dust, etc.

It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just stick it down in there and make sure extra paper comes up the sides and doesn’t fold down inside. I found myself wishing I had a star shaped crock pot so that my cake would be star shaped.

In an ugly brown mixing bowl, combine some softened butter and sucanat. You can use your hand mixer, but I just used a wooden spoon and whisk. I hadn’t used my whisk yet for the day, so I had to grab it. When the butter and sucanat are mixed up well, add some eggs and mix again. Now it’s time to stir in the secret ingredient…….applesauce. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did ya? Also, add some vanilla. Cake isn’t cake without vanilla. You can quote me on that.  Oh, and the mixture might look a little funny…..like curdled milk. If it does, no sweat.

When your liquid mixture is well combined, add some flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. If you’re not using a hand mixer, then you will definitely want to use your whisk right now. It’ll help you get rid of any clumps that might be sticking around. Clumpy cakes are not fun. Edible, yes. Fun, no.

Mix well.

Now, pour that batter down into your lined crock. In order to avoid my paper folding down in or doing some other nonsense, I spooned my batter down into the crock and smoothed it out with a spatula.

Cover and cook on high for about 2 hours. Some of my paper wanted to stick out the top and my lid wasn’t on very tight. So, I took the lid off and folded down the paper so that it wouldn’t stick out. I made sure I pushed it in toward the sides so that it wouldn’t interfere with baking cake. Some things in life you want to interfere with – a baking cake is NOT one of them. Thank you.

At almost 2 hours, my cake was done. I tested it with a cake tester to make sure (a toothpick works just fine). I knew it was done because I started smelling something funny…..okay, so I started smelling something burned – which is not an uncommon occurrence around here. Turns out that apparently one of the sides of my crock cooks hotter than the others…and I had a burned edge. Oops? Here’s something you might not know about me – I don’t mind eating most burned food. Burned toast? Yep. Burned pizza crust? Yep. Burned popcorn? Nope. Burned paper? Nope.

The cake will lift out easily when you pull up on the parchment paper. We paired this with vanilla ice cream and it was divine! I wanted more. I didn’t want to share – as usual, we ate it while Annie was asleep. In order to insure that I wouldn’t eat it all, I stuck the rest in a Tupperware box and put it in the freezer. That works pretty well because trying to eat a frozen cake might result in chipped teeth….or so I hear from OTHER PEOPLE. *Cough*

I’ll be making this on a regular basis…..as long as there aren’t other people around – to share or to smell my burned cake.