Old-fashioned Danish apple cake

Today I served Sunday dinner for my mother in form of grand mother-style food using recipes from "Frøken Jensens Kogebog". We had Danish pork meat balls known as frikadeller served together with boiled potatoes, brown sauce, pickled cucumber and red beet. As dessert we enjoyed old-fashioned Danish apple cake.


I have previously shared a recipe on traditional Danish apple cake with you. This time I roasted the breadcrumbs and sugar in butter prior to putting the cake together.

Old-fashioned Danish apple cake is one of the most easy cake to made at all, as it requires not any baking or freezing at all !!!! It is the style of Danish apple cake, which I grew up with at home. My mother would make the cake during Autumn, when guests were invited over for coffee, she would never serve it as a dessert in connection with a meal, but always together with coffee. In my opinion you can served it as dessert as well.

Even if it is very, very, very easy to make, you still need to make some preparation in advance in form of the apple mash/compote and the roasted breadcrupms. However, this can be done quiet easy be done 1-2 days in advance (as the preparation of the apple boats without peel is quiet time consuming).

You can either serve this cake as a single serving or in one big bowl. From my childhood home I am used to have this cake served in one big bowl. I am not used to the tradition of adding small lumps of red jams such as redcurrant jam, as my mother never did that. However, in some family this is another tradition, when serving Danish apple cake.

Old-fashioned Danish apple cake:

• 1 kg apple - to be cored, cut into boat shape and peeled
• 2 dl water
• 100 g sugar
• 2 teaspoon home-made vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon commercial vanilla sugar
• 100 g breadcrumbs
• 50 g sugar
• 50 butter
• whipped dairy whipped cream, 35-40% fat¨

1. Bring the apple boats and water to the boil in medium size cooking pot under lid.
2. Gentle boil the apples, until they are soft.
3. Mash the apple boats into a homogeneous mass.
4. Stir in the sugar and vanilla sugar.
5. Taste the apple mask, add more sugar, if you prefer a sweeter taste.
6. Cold down the apple mash.
7. Mix the sugar and breadcrumbs together.
8. Melt the butter on a frying pan.
9. Roast the breadcrumbs-sugar mass in butter, while stirring.
10. Keep roasting until the breadcrumbs are golden in colour and crips.
11. Cool down the breadcrumbs. Stir it from time to time.
12. Start by filling a layer of breadcrumbs into the glass/bowl.
13. Afterwards fill apple mash on top.
14. Filling a second layer of breadcrumbs on top.
15. Followed by a second layer of apple mash/compote.
16. Continue to fill layer of breadcrumbs and apple mash, until the glass/bowl is almost filled.
17. The last layer is breadcrumbs followed by a finishing touch of whipped dairy cream.
18. Let the apple cake rest in the refrigerator for 1-4 hours before serving it. It can also be eaten right away.