Lenten Spice Cake With Carrot Marmalade Filling

For a cake made without eggs, butter, or milk this was pretty moist. The marmalade from the previous post worked perfectly with the spices of the cake. The one problem was, I didn't have any applesauce. I did however have 5 Granny Smith apples, so I made a batch of applesauce. That took all of fifteen minutes. Really.

The applesauce was so good, I'll post the recipe here, but you can of course use store-bought. Still, if you've never tried making your own, why not give it a go? The most difficult/time consuming part was peeling the apples. You can freeze any extra in plastic bags.

For the applesauce:

1 pint tart apples, peeled and sliced
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar (optional)
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Cut up apples and place in a large pot. Add water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until soft-about ten minutes. With a potato masher, break up the apples leaving some chunks (unless you like it really pureed, in which case you can put it through a food mill. Add sugar to the pan, and lemon juice. Mash together well and boil one minute longer. There, you've made applesauce. You can also add spices, or vanilla if you like.

For the cake:

1/2 cup dark molasses
1-1 1/2 cups applesauce
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 3/4 cup AP flour
1/2 cup sugar

Grease a 9 inch round cake pan. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine molasses with 1 cup of the applesauce-reserve the rest in case you need it.

Combine dry ingredients, and whisk together. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry. If it is too thick to pour into the pan, add a bit more applesauce, up to 1/2 cup more.

Pour into pan, place in the oven on the centre rack and bake about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre tests done. It may take much longer, but again, better to keep checking than have a dry spice cake-at least that's my thinking. On the other hand, dry cake just invites dousing it in booze, so maybe you have to call that one as you see it.

Let cake cool on a rack, in the pan for 20 minutes, then let cool completely on a rack. At this point, I split the layer and filled it with the marmalade from the previous post, but you could just skip that. I also made a glaze of confectioner's/icing sugar and water to spread on top. You could easily just dust it with powdered sugar and have a beautiful looking cake.

Really though, that marmalade is magical. I can't think of the last time I enjoyed something quite so much.