Tonight I decided to try making the Apple Sauce Cake I posted a few days ago.  Before making the cake, I carefully read through the instructions, and being as there is no oven temperature, I consulted a few other spice/coffee cake recipes and decided on a temp & time.

First, straining the applesauce is something I didn’t consider very well.  I don’t actually own a strainer, so it is now on my shopping list.  I used doubled paper towels, but I don’t recommend this.  You could use cheesecloth, which is what I was angling for, but I don’t care for the output.  It was a little more liquidy than I would think is desired.  In future, I will strain in a proper strainer until no liquid drips from the apple pulp. As you can see, I substituted butter for ‘fat’ as the original recipe requested.  :-)  I used softened butter and creamed the butter and brown sugar until well mixed.  In another bowl, I combined all the dry ingredients and mixed them together well.  You could use a sifter, but I haven’t had the best experiences with them, so I just use a spoon to combine the dry ingredients.  I folded all the dry ingredients, the raisins and the applesauce into the butter and sugar mix, then added the eggs last, for no reason other than Melody wanted to break the eggs and she was across the counter from me. I beat the mix for 2 minutes, although I suspect the designated 2 minutes is actually for hand mixing (i.e. with a spoon and your arm power only).  We made sure the batter tasted good – it did – and we put it into a greased loaf pan.  I used a loaf pan because that is what the recipe called for, but an 8×8 or an 8″ round would also suffice.

Some other recipes I consulted called to bake the cake for 40 minutes at 350.  I checked our cake at 35 minutes and it was still quite moist and unbaked at the top but beginning to darken and crisp on the sides, so I returned it to the oven at 275 for 15 minutes.  After cooling, it was still very moist at the top, I suspect because my applesauce was not drained sufficiently.

The cake is moist and not too sweet, more like a spice cake than a regular cake.  You would not need to frost this, but if you did a lightly sweetened cream cheese frosting would be perfect.