The Home Cook: Apple Ginger Cake

There are a lot of days I open each one of my cupboards, starting from left to right and scan the shelves slowly. One by one, carefully looking over the cans, boxes and containers and come to the sad conclusion that there is nothing to eat...and then promptly feel guilty. After all, I HAVE cans, boxes and containers and none of them are empty, which is more than many, many people can say. We have food...an almost embarrassing amount for two people, freezers (yes, plural) several shelves and a mini-pantry all over-flowing with all sorts of things edible.

What I really mean is that we don't have any food (or very, very little of it) that is instantly ready to eat. Besides a mini-collection of soups and the sporadic pizza or corn dog, most of the food in my house is a component for cooking. Cans of various beans, bags of rice, containers of flour or boxes pasta...all very good and perfectly acceptable food. Besides, this is the way I want it, Tim and I are trying (emphasis on trying) to eat healthier and one of the ways we do it is by attempting to minimize our reliance on heavily processed food. Over the last 9 months I've been very carefully weeding out the pantry.



The difficulty with all this weeding & healthy eating, of course, that this requires me to cook and clean the kitchen...a lot. We need supper every night and left-overs for lunches the next day. I'm not always successful and we eat more restaurant & fast food than we should, but we're taking this one step at a time. (This would also be why there haven't been many recipe posts in the last year...a whole new cooking repertoire takes time to build!) However, on Friday I discovered that besides three cans of evaporated milk (!) I also had a box of cake mix and some pie filling. This at least was a snap to take care of. With a few smart additions to the cake mix and the use of a set of 8x8" baking pans, we could have a small treat in the house, I'd be rid of one more thing that shouldn't be lingering around and I could garner some popularity points at work. Completely win/win/win.

It doesn't hurt that this turned out to be quite tasty...though I imagine making this with a from-scratch cake base would be even BETTER.

Apple Ginger Cake
Adapted from Wilderness pie filling booklet

1 box (18.25oz) Yellow Cake Mix
1 t Ground Ginger
1/2 t Ground Cloves

1 can (21oz) Apple Pie Filling
3 eggs

6 T Light Brown Sugar
2 t Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Light grease and flour a 9x13x2" cake pan or two 8x8x2" cake pans, set aside.

In a small bowl mix together brown sugar and cinnamon, set aside.

In a large bowl mix together cake mix, ginger and cloves. With a heavy spoon or an electric mixer beat in pie filling and eggs until batter is smooth.

Pour half of the batter into the prepared cake pan(s). Top with half of the sugar and cinnamon mixture. Pour remaining batter over the sugar and level with a spatula, top with remaining sugar mixture.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool for 15 minutes before cutting and serving or cool completely before covering and storing.


Cook's Notes:

- The original recipe called for a box of yellow or spice cake mix, if you use the spiced mix don't add the cloves.

- The ginger is a strong feature in the flavor of this cake, but if it's not your thing you may want to half it or even omit it.

- The recipe says that you can mix this with an electric mixer, but the way I figure it that would pulverize the apple pieces. I prefer the larger pieces of fruit so I mixed by hand.