Apple Dapple Cake is an old fashioned apple cake recipe perfect for fall! A tasty apple dessert made with chunky apples & a sweet glaze. So moist and delicious and, best of all, it’s so easy to make.

 

With fall coming up, we’re eager to start making up all sorts of tasty apple dessert recipes. Apple pie, apple cobbler, apple crisp– all the classics. But I also wanted to try my hand at making something like an old fashioned apple cake: dense, moist, and loaded with chunks of diced apples. That’s how we settled on this easy Apple Dapple Cake recipe.

It takes inspiration from a lot of vintage apple cake recipes and looks a lot like an Amish Apple Cake. We whipped up a quick and easy cake batter which ends up making a moist cake thanks to the applesauce we mixed in. The batter comes together real easy and bakes like a dream. Top it all off with a rich brown sugar apple cake glaze and you’ve got a delicious apple cake that makes for an amazing fall dessert!

Why you’ll love this tasty Apple Dapple Cake recipe

• This is such a tasty apple cake recipe that doesn’t skimp on the apple and fall flavors. Diced apples, applesauce, classic apple pie spices, some pecans- this is a recipe that’s packed with flavor!
• Old fashioned cake recipes have a charm to them. We’re whipping up a cake batter from scratch with no cake mixes, and make a rich sugary glaze as a topping instead of cake frosting. Reach for a bundt pan to make this really old fashioned!
• Between the eggs and applesauce in the cake batter and topping our cake with a glaze, this might be one of the tastiest moist cakes you’ll ever make.

Apple Dapple Cake Ingredients

While this recipe uses quite a few ingredients, most of them are fridge and pantry staples! You’re not going to need any terribly exotic ingredients to make this tasty cake for yourself. With that in mind, here’s all the ingredients for our Apple Dapple Cake recipe:

• Flour – All purpose flour will work perfectly fine here.
• Baking Soda – Make sure you’re using soda and not baking powder.
• Spices – We went with some cinnamon and nutmeg for this apple dessert recipe- classic choices. Feel free to add in some cardamom for a spice blend more like our homemade Apple Pie Spice.
• Applesauce – You can go with a store-bought apple sauce or you might feel like making some Slow Cooker Applesauce.
• Granulated Sugar
• Brown Sugar – We’ll need this and the granulated white sugar for both the cake batter and the glaze.
• Eggs
• Vanilla Extract – Once again, for both the batter and apple cake glaze.
• Apples – We’ll be peeling, coring, and dicing these apples. We went with Granny Smith apples, which are classic baking apples.
• Chopped Pecans – These are an optional little add-in. They pair really well with all these wonderful fall flavors!
• Butter
• Heavy Cream

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Apple Dapple Cake

What you’re going to love most about our Apple Dapple Cake is how simple and easy to make it is. To make this easy cake recipe for yourself, here’s all you’ll have to do:

1. Whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg and set aside. In a separate bowl, stir together applesauce, sugar and brown sugar before adding eggs and vanilla extract. Mix until blended and combined.
2. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients until fully combined. Fold in diced apples and optional pecans before transferring batter to greased 9×13 baking dish. Put in 325 degree oven and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick poked in pulls clean.
3. Combine butter, sugars, heavy cream, and vanilla extract in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium/medium-high heat and stir continuously for 1-2 minutes until a glaze forms. Pour apple cake glaze over finished cake.

Substitutions

If you’re missing some ingredients for the Apple Dapple Cake, don’t be worried! We’ve got a few substitutions you can try:

• Baking Apples – Like most baked apple desserts, we went with some Granny Smith apples. However, there’s plenty of other great baking apples you can pick from. The best baking apples are Honeycrisp apples, Golden Delicious apples, and Pink Lady apples- just to name a few.
• Pecans – This optional add-in adds a little touch of nuttiness that pairs wonderfully with all the other fall flavors in this dessert dish. If you don’t have pecans or they’re not your favorite nuts, you could just as easily use walnuts or even hazelnuts!
• Heavy Cream – We use this ingredient in our glaze to give it plenty of body and a touch of creaminess. In a pinch, you might be able to sub-in something like half-and-half or maybe even some whole milk.

Variations

Need some ideas to change our Apple Dapple Cake recipe? Here’s a couple ways to shake things up a little:

• Dapple Apple Bundt Cake – A lot of these old fashioned apple cake and Amish apple cake recipes usually get baked up in bundt pans. There’s nothing stopping you from doing this with our recipe here: you may have to adjust the cooking times and amount of batter depending on your bundt pan.
• Cake Glaze – While we love the rich, creamy flavor of our apple cake glaze, maybe you want to top your cake with something different. You could instead top your cake off with a simple vanilla icing, a dusting of powdered sugar, or maybe make a brown sugar frosting like I did for out 3 Ingredient Apple Cake.

Storage / Freezing

Storage: Transfer your finished Apple Dapple Cake to an airtight container- either all together or portioned into slices. Kept in the fridge like this, it should keep for a good 4-5 days.

Freezing: You can also freeze your finished apple cake for long-term storage. Wrap in plastic wrap and/or foil to keep it from getting freezer burn and keep frozen for 2-3 months.

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