The Ultimate Apple Spice Cake (Secret Recipe Club)

In my quiet exploration of the food blog Bewitching Kitchen this month, I made a shortlist of oh, about a dozen things I wanted to make.

That’s the way food bloggers are. We browse a cookbook and we leave it littered with little Post-it® Notes, marking all the recipes that interest us. We scroll through a blog, and we can get lost for hours. Oh, that spreadsheet for work I was supposed to be working on? I’ll get to it later, after I bookmark the Roasted Beet Hummus, the Cheddar and Fennel Seed Crackers and the Avocado Cilantro Mousse that stole the show at Sally’s holiday dinner. And don’t let me near her Clementine Cake, or I won’t leave.

I sat up straight when I came upon Ultimate Apple Cake (her most popular post from last year), which she made twice in two weeks. That sounds like the kind of obsessive thing I would do, and have done (I made this Banana Breakfast Cake with Pecan Streusel Topping 8 times in one month! Yes, 8. Sigh.).

So that was good enough for me, along with her description of it: “It’s a bunch of diced apples surrounded by a few dollops of cake batter, that puffs and gently envelops each piece of fruit, resulting in a dessert that’s a cross between cake and clafoutis. Very French, very elegant, just enough decadence to turn your afternoon tea into a four-star event.”

I immediately checked the fruit basket (yes! Four apples!), and turned on the oven. So, so glad I did.

I explored Sally’s blog — Bewitching Kitchen – this month as part of Secret Recipe Club, in which we quietly get to know another blogger and his or her recipes and then reveal what we made from that blog. Today is reveal day, and below this you can see what we all discovered this month.

But first, meet Sally, who was born in Brazil, has lived in Calif. and Paris, and is an absolutely charming, good natured food blogger I met online years ago at a forum called Cook Talk. Her work really fascinates me. She’s a biochemist who works on iron transport by bacteria such as E. Coli, now working in the biochemistry department at Kansas State University.  She stays in shape by running, golf, and doing P90X. Want to speak to her in Portuguese or French? She’d love it!

Here’s how she explains her research: “We study how bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes get iron from the environment and “swallow it up.” The metal is indispensable for bacteria as well as all other living organisms to survive, but it is very tricky to obtain. Iron can be compared to money in the sense that everyone who has it tries to protect it from being taken away. However, bacteria developed sophisticated systems to do just that: steal the iron from you and use it to survive. Since all pathogenic bacteria need to obtain iron to cause disease, we hope that our research will lead to the discovery of new weapons to fight infections.”

As a microbiologist, molecular biologist and biochemist, she has particular expertise in bacteria, and strong, science-based opinions on the irresponsible use of antibiotics in food production, which you can read. It’s worth your time.

Thank you, Sally, for the gift of your wonderful blog, the good, thoughtful reading you offer us there and the delicious recipes you share. We’re grateful!

Meanwhile, browse the photo array below to see what else the Secret Recipe Club cooked up this month! 

Tagged as: allspice, apples, boiled apple cider, brandy, cake, cinnamon, coffee cake, dessert, nutmeg, Secret Recipe Club, vanilla extract