Ultra soft apple pound cake Quick recipe

The traditional recipe for Breton quarter cheese garnished with apples produces a less rich, lighter, softer and tasty cake.

With a small necessary detail to take into account for weighing: as in the recipe we must beat the egg whites, we must weigh the whites and the yolks separately and add these two weights to use as a basis.

An average-sized egg generally weighs 55 to 65 grams. (useful weight, without the shell of course), we will say on average 60 gr, hence my basis for preparing the other ingredients at 220 grams each, a little bit below 4 times 60 gr = 240 gr.

For this apple pound cake recipe, as the fruit will add a sweet side to the cake, I reduced the amount of sugar needed, going from 220 gr to 160 gr. If you like very gourmet cakes, you can increase to 180 gr.

How are apples used in this cake?

Unlike most apple cakes or pies where the apples are cut into quarters or slices, here, the apples are peeled, cored and grated with the same grater you use for your carrots or grated cheese.

Personally I have an Artisan Kitchen aid robot with two grid sizes for grating, I used the largest here to still have a little chew and not to reduce the apples into too fine pieces.
A bit like we do for a carrot cake or a chocolate zucchini cake in which the carrots and zucchini are peeled and grated.

Apples are used grated and raw in pound cake.

The steps for making pound cake

The recipe is very quick so read the instructions first to fully appreciate the order in which the ingredients are added before you begin.

We start as explained above by separating the egg whites and yolks. If you are not using medium sized eggs, weigh your white and yolk eggs separately, add the weight and check that you have more or less 240 g.

The ideal is to first prepare the cake base with first the egg yolks and sugar whisked together until the mixture turns white then added together the flour, the pinch of salt and the butter which will have been melted in the preheated oven (or in the microwave or in a saucepan).

Also add at this time the perfume(s) of your choicevanilla, cinnamon, lemon, rum, calvados…

Everything mixed well is a little dense and adding the egg whites at this time could risk breaking them and therefore making the pound cake less well. So you will add the grated apples to the egg yolk, sugar, flour and butter mixture before the egg whites.

Then whip the egg whites and gently fold in the egg whites with cake batter and apple.
As we are using egg whites, no yeast is needed.

Finally pour the preparation of your pound cake in a buttered and floured mold and do cook for 45 minutes at 180°C .

Flavor your pound cake according to your taste with:

• fine zest of organic lemon like in these step by step photos,
• a glass of amber rum or Calvados,
• a little bit of cinnamon,
• a little bit of vanilla…

If you make other adaptations, let me know in the comments.

I of course also offer you the real traditional Breton pound cake recipe and a slightly more “exotic” variation perfect with a cup of green tea: a matcha and white chocolate pound cake.