Secret Recipe Club - Cinnamon Apple Cream Cheese Cake

It's the 5th Monday and it's time for Secret Recipe Club. I know that's a weird one, but they've started doing something new with months that have five Mondays. Now it's a special (optional) theme reveal week that matches you with anyone from the other groups. This month's theme was holiday treats since Christmas and Thanksgiving are coming up so quickly. I rarely make sweets for secret recipe club (in spite of my blog name that rarely applies anymore) so this was a great chance to try something new.

As many of you already know, Secret Recipe Club is a collection of bloggers who make another person's recipe and all post on the same day. It gives you a great chance to know some other bloggers, find some new recipes and rediscover some of your older recipes from long ago. I usually get embarrassed by how much better their photos are than my photos, but that's okay too.

This week, I had Heather's blog "Join Us Pull Up a Chair". That's cool. I've had this blog before and I made some super fabulous Salmon Cakes and Pumpkin Beer Bread. I remembered she had a ton of recipes for muffins and other sweets, so I couldn't wait to find something to fit this challenge. I knew I wanted to make something with apples because I still have so many of them from our CSA box. Seriously, so many apples. I opted to make her Cinnamon Apple Cake which sounded so interesting with the addition of cream cheese. And it called for 6 cup of apples. That was really the selling point for me.

Heather originally made this cake with 3 cups of apples and said she would increase it to 6 next time. I made it with six and though it was delicious, it never set properly with a nice crumb like a cake. It was still set, not runny, but closer to a British sticky toffee pudding or something of that nature. The extra apples just imparted too much moisture. It was still delicious, but not what I expected. My husband really liked it this way and it was absolutely perfect with a little vanilla ice cream on warm cake.

Thanks for this great recipe Heather. It might not be what we originally expected, but it was still something delicious.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar + 2 Tbsp
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temp
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 6 oz cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup AP flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking power
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 6 cups chopped peeled apples

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9 inch springform pan with cooking spray. Set aside.
2. Cream together butter, cream cheese and 1 1/2 cups sugar until smooth.
3. Add eggs and vanilla until well mixed. Sift in flour, baking powder, salt and 1 tsp cinnamon and stir until just mixed.
4. Fold in chopped applies into the batter and pour into prepared pan. Mix together remaining cinnamon and 2 Tbsp sugar and sprinkle on top of cake.
5. Bake cake for 1 1/2 hours until set. A toothpick inserted will never be quite clean, but mostly done. Let cool completely before slicing.

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