Italian Apple Cake

 In response to popular demand (one person asked), here's my apple cake recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 lemon
• 4 apples (should be about 1 1/4 lb)
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt (omit if using salted butter)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Powdered sugar

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Line the bottom of a 10" springform pan with parchment paper. Butter the inside of the pan or the cake will stick
3. Melt the butter
4. Juice and zest the lemon
5. Peel, core, and slice the apples. Cut the slices of three of them into quarters, put in a bowl and mix with the lemon juice. Cut the slices of the 4th into halves and set aside
6. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together (optional but improves the texture)
7. Put the sugar in a large bowl and beat in the melted butter
8. Beat in the eggs
9. Stir in the vanilla, lemon zest, and the flour mixture to make a batter
10. Stir in the three apples. There will be barely enough batter to bind the apple pieces
11. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and even it out
12. Arrange the slices of the 4th apple decoratively on top
13. Bake for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean
14. Remove from the oven.
15. After it cools and you take it out of the pan, sprinkle with powdered sugar

Optional stuff

Add 1/2 cup of chopped pecans or walnuts to the batter before baking

Use 1 lb of cherries instead of apples. They can be watery particularly if frozen so you might want to drain off the juice, boil it down, and add that to the batter

Adapted from this recipe