Procrastination Recipe: Apple Dump Cake

I know what you're thinking, didn't you say you were going to stop procrastinating and start writing? I did. And I did. Friday and Saturday I wrote and it was fantastic. But I thought I deserved a day away from the computer today. So I headed out of the city to my father's house, picked up my sister and we went apple picking. It was such a beautiful day, the kind that cannot be spent indoors.

 

  (Here's my sister and I lounging in the orchard discussing what I spent Friday and Saturday working on, which I'll discuss another time.)

Every Fall I do an apple pie or a crisp, but the other day a coworker came across a recipe for Apple Dump Cake and thought it would be a nice change so I gave it a try. This is the easiest recipe I've ever done. I usually like a challenge but anyone can make this and it's still delicious.

Ingredients:
A box of yellow cake mix. I used Betty Crocker, but any will do.
5 large apples (we used both MacIntosh and Cortland)
The juice of 1-2 lemons (depending upon your preference)
Two table spoons sugar
One table spoon cinnamon
One stick unsalted butter







Peel and core apples, then dice them into small pieces. Place in bowl with lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon for fifteen minutes or so, basically so maceration can occur.



Grease pan. We used a large rectangular glass dish. I suppose most anything would suffice, a brownie tin, cake pan etc. Just make sure it's big enough. After greasing, pour apples into dish and pour cake mix over it. Because it's so dry you need to loosely combine the apples and cake mix. It doesn't need to be perfect, hence why this is called a "Dump Cake". Once loosely mixed put pats of butter (we used the entire stick, but half a stick will do if you'd prefer this to be a healthier recipe, although let's be serious, if you wanted to be healthy you'd just eat a plain apple, so use the whole stick of butter) on top, spread out evenly.

 

Bake at 325 F for 30-40 minutes. My dad's oven is a little wonky so I ended up leaving the cake in for close to an hour and just kept checking on it and poking at it. Basically you want the top to start to become a little golden, but there are no eggs so it can be done whenever you want without fear of salmonella.

Eat warm or cooled. I couldn't wait. It was very similar consistency to crisp. I warmed some caramel and drizzled it over the top which made it even sweeter than it already was. I think a scoop of vanilla ice cream would also be delicious.

Enjoy!

~Stephanie