Shelly's Recipe

CARAMEL APPLE CAKE WITH NUTELLA GANACHE

Category: Cakes

Cake:
1 1/4 cup cake flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, room temperature
2 egg whites, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
2 caramel apples, cored and sliced thin (about 1/4 inch thick)
6-8 tablespoons Nutella

Nutella Ganache:
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
6-10 tablespoons Nutella (check for desired sweetness and consistency)

Bring the heavy cream to a boil in a medium sauce pan on medium-high heat. Make sure to stir occasionally. Remove pan from heat, and stir in the chopped chocolate until it is combined. Fold in the Nutella. Make sure it is the consistency you like and also check for sweetness. Let the ganache cool in a metal bowl with plastic wrap on top of bowl. The wrap will stop the ganache from forming a skin. Stir the ganache occasionally.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour your bundt pan.( I even sprayed my pan after with Pam baking spray because the first time I made the cake, the caramel stuck in some spots.) In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, and salt. In a small bowl, combine the egg, egg whites, and vanilla.

Cream the butter and the sugar until nice and fluffy (about 3-5 minutes). Slowly add the egg and egg white mixture. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the batter. Beat until combined. Add 1/2 of the buttermilk and mix until combined. Add another 1/3 of the flour mixture and beat until combined. Beat in the rest of the buttermilk until combined. Add the rest of the flour mixture. Beat until combined and stop to spread the side of the bowl to make sure it is mixed nicely. Fold in the cored and sliced caramel apples.

Spoon about 1/2 of the cake mixture into the bundt pan. Spoon the 6-8 tablespoons of the Nutella around that first layer of the cake. Spread it around with the back of your spoon to make sure you have it evenly distributed. Add the rest of the cake batter on top of the Nutella layer. Bake for about 40-50 minutes. Check with a toothpick. When it comes out clean, it is ready.

While the cake is baking, make your ganache. When the cake has fully cooled, spread on the ganache and run!

NOTE: Rather than folding in the cored and sliced caramel apples, I put half the batter in my pan, then lay the apple slices carefully over the batter, chopped up caramels over that and a drizzle of the ganache I had already made over that. Then I carefully poured the rest of the batter over the top, spread it out and baked the cake. Once it cooled, I poured the ganache over the cake.