SOLE Apple Cranberry Coffee Cake

Jill from Cloud City Coffee has been so generous with me. After I raved about her coconut bread and completed a set of baking trials at my house, trying to replicate her recipe, she caved and shared the recipe with me. Now, she has shared her apple coffee cake for my (and your) home baking pleasure! She has been working on a cookbook and eventually you will be able to buy a whole set of great recipes from her. If you would rather let someonelse do the baking - you could always drive over to her cafe instead!

I added cranberries to this recipe when I baked it on Christmas morning and it looked quite festive! This week, I replaced the orange juice with buttermilk and left out the zest, so that I could make it into a SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical) recipe. The buttermilk worked just fine, but the bread is better with the orange juice.

Fresh Apple Coffee Cake

Makes 1 10-inch Bundt Cake


4 peeled, cored and coarsely chopped tart cooking apples
1/3 c. packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
4 large eggs

1 cup vegetable oil or melted butter
1/2 cup orange juice
3 c. flour
1 3/4 cups white sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon orange zest

Preheat the oven to 375º and grease and flour a 10-inch bundt pan and set aside. In a small bowl, combine the apples with the brown sugar and the cinnamon. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and orange zest.

With an electric mixer or blender, beat the eggs and oil until thick and creamy, about 2 minutes at high speed. Add the egg and oil mixture to the dry ingredients along with the orange juice and beat just until moistened, but thoroughly blended. Do not overmix, but there should be no lumps or dry spots.

Pour one-third of the batter over the bottom of the prepared pan. Cover evenly with half the apple mixture and then pour another one-third of the batter over the apples. Use a spatula to smooth the batter over the apples to cover completely. Repeat with the remaining apples and batter, ending with a smooth layer of batter.

Bake for about 1 hour, or until a knife comes out nearly clean.

SOLE Notes: Organic flour from Bob's Redmill (grown in WA and milled in OR), buttermilk from Sunrise (WA), organic apples (WA), butter from Golden Glen (Bow, WA), free range eggs from wilcox and steibers (WA). All of the main ingredients for this recipe are available from my SOLE sponsor, Spud.com