Vanilla Custard Apple Cake

At The Tea Lounge in Park Slope last weekend, I had an absolutely lovely apple cake. It looked like a crumb cake but the gentle hipster behind the counter said it's an apple pie. True enough, it had pie crust at the bottom. The middle were chunks of apples swimming in creamy sweet custard and topped with substantial layer of streusel.

So I made it my mission to replicate the cake at home. My attempt number one came out almost on the mark. Almost. The cake was moist and deliciously creamy. Chunks of apples were still intact and gave nice crunch. And it was perfectly sweetened - not too sweet but sweet enough to keep you (me) wanting more. Almost.... It just needs more steusel. Something more hefty to stand up to the pie crust and creamy chunky apples.



I started with an olive oil pie crust just because it only involved mixing and pressing the dough on to a baking dish. There's no need for fancy pie crust because it will soak up all the liquid at the bottom anyway. I used a combination of Granny Smith, Gala and Golden Delicious apples. Gala stays chunky after cooking while the other two become soft. Sour Granny Smith balances off all the other sweet and creamy ingredients.



Ingredients

• 1 recipe olive oil pie crust


• 6 apples (I used 2 Granny Smith apples, 2 Gala and 2 Golden Delicious.)


• 1 1/2 cups low-fat yogurt


• 3 eggs


• 1/4 teaspoon salt


• 2 tablespoons instant tapioca (or just all purpose flour)


• 1 vanilla bean


• For Steusel


• 2/3 cups all purpose flour


• 4 tablespoons cold butter


• 1/3 cup sugar


• 2 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. In an 8 inch square pan, mix all the dry ingredients for the crust together. Sprinkle oil and milk over. Use finger tips to mix until just wet and press onto the pan. Cover and refrigerate.


2. Prepare the streusel by mixing 2/3 cup flour and 1/3 cup sugar together in a medium bowl. Rub in cold butter and sprinkle milk over until you get coarse crumbs. Cover and refrigerate.


3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Clean, peel, core and cut the apples into chunks. Whisk yogurt, eggs, salt and tapioca together. Split the vanilla bean and scrape it seeds into the yogurt mixture. Pour over apples. Stir.


4. Pile apples on top of the pie crust. Pour any extra liquid into the pan. Sprinkle the streusel on top. Place the pan on a cookie sheet (in case of juice overflow) and bake for 60 minutes or until the top is golden. Rotate the pan half way through cooking. Let cool before serving.