Substitute apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice for the Chinese five-spice powder.This moist cake has the same wonderful apple flavor as a pie, but it’s hand-holdable and feeds a lot of people too. The fruit flavor is enhanced by aromatic Chinese five-spice powder.
Yield: 10–12 servings
Active time: 20 minutes
Start to finish: 2 hours, including time for cooling
3/4 cup raisins
1/3 cup rum, divided
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder
11/2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup tapioca flour
3 Granny Smith apples
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons dark rum
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 10-inch bundt pan and dust it with brown rice flour. Combine raisins and 1/4 cup rum in a small microwave-safe bowl, and heat on High (100 percent) power for 45 seconds. Stir, and allow raisins to plump.
2. Combine butter, eggs, sugar, five-spice powder, baking powder, xanthan gum, and salt in a mixing bowl. Whisk by hand until smooth. Add brown rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca flour, and stir well; the batter will be very thick.
3. Peel, quarter, and core apples. Cut each apple quarter in half lengthwise, and then thinly slice apples. Add apples to batter, and stir to coat apples evenly. Pack batter into the prepared pan.
4. Bake cake in the center of the oven for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool cake in the pan set on a rack for 20 minutes, or until cool. Invert cake onto a serving platter.
5. Combine confectioners’ sugar and remaining rum in a small bowl. Drizzle glaze over top of cake, allowing it to run down the sides. Serve immediately.
Note: The cake can be prepared up to 1 day in advance and kept at room temperature, loosely covered with plastic wrap.
Variations
Substitute apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice for the Chinese five-spice powder.
Substitute ripe pears for the apples.
There isn’t really an Aunt Jemima or a Jolly Green Giant, but there certainly was a Johnny Appleseed. Named John Chapman, he was born in Massachusetts in 1774. Unlike the artistic depictions of him propagating apples by tossing seeds out of his backpack, Chapman actually started nurseries for European species of apple brought from England as seedlings in the Allegheny Valley in 1800. By the time of his death in 1845, he had pushed as far west as Indiana, establishing groves of apple trees.