Cooking with Boys...Kentucky Apple Cake

As I have mentioned before, my boys love to cook. Especially Thane. He wants to be a Pastry Chef when he grows up. I want to nurture their love and enthusiasm for cooking/baking so I let them help me in the kitchen often. I've tossed around the idea of creating something with them, once a week, and blogging about it, but you know what they say about good intentions and I am not about to go "there". We'll see how it goes.

Collin's Mom (Hi Janie!) makes the most delicious apple cake with rich cream cheese frosting. I was so excited when she shared the recipe with me and I hope YOU will be excited that I am sharing the recipe with YOU!

Kentucky Apple Cake

Beat: 2 eggs
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
Set aside

Sift: 2 cups flour
1 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
Add to egg mixture slowly

Mix 1 can Wilderness Apple Pie Filling to batter
Pour batter into a 9x12 or 9x13 pan that has been greased & floured.
Bake at 345 degrees 40 minutes or until done. If you use a glass pan
lower temp to 325.

These are all of the ingredients you will need.

This is the first part of the recipe before it is beaten.

Thane is beating it. Such concentration!

Thane learned the reason for sifting flour and how to do it.

He just added the cinnamon without sifting it. No harm done.

After we slowly added the sifted dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and beat it, this is what it looked like. It was REALLY thick. I mean REALLY thick. Made me a bit nervous.

One of the privileges of being a cook!

Next, Thane added the can of apple pie filling. We couldn't find the Wilderness brand, so we used Comstock (210z.). He figured out that by using the spatula, he could get the majority of the filling out of the can and not waste it! Lots of learning going on.

Not sure if we were to beat the apple pie filling in, but we did. Now it was looking more like batter. I felt better.

While the cake was in the oven doing its thing, we made the cream cheese frosting.

Kentucky Apple Cake Cream Cheese Frosting

Mix: 2 3oz packages of cream cheese (room temp)

1 tsp soft butter (room temp)
2 cups powdered sugar (you may need to sift this)
1 tsp vanilla

Mix with a hand mixer and spread on cooled cake.

These are the ingredients needed for the most yummy frosting.

Thane learned about "leveling off" the dry ingredients in the measuring cups.

Mixing up the ingredients.

Good stuff! Seriously good stuff.