Bavarian Apple Torte

Recently a couple of kids in our family went on a school trip to Germany. Which inspired me to bake. As most things do.

This is not difficult to make but I have to warn you it made a mess of my oven!

The butter in the crust seeped out of the pan a bit and greased up the bottom of my oven, which then smoked up the kitchen and made the house smell awful instead of apple-y and delicious as it should have. So do yourself a favor when you make this and wrap the outside of your pan with foil to keep the butter from messing up your oven. And maybe set it on another pan just to be extra safe.

The greasy mess meant that the next day I had to run my self-cleaning setting on my oven. It needed it actually given that I hadn’t done it since last winter. It made me nervous though. You may recall that I recently had a little oven mishap when my heating element went bad and created a scary fire-ball that pretty much blinded us. Well my handy man (aka Tim) replaced the element and I have been right back at baking. But cleaning cycle gets SOOOO hot that it scared me a little to think the same thing could happen again. Needless to say I made sure to run it while Tim was home so he could tend to the fireball if the need arose. It didn’t and I am baking in a clean oven again. Woo Hoo!

This torte was delish. And it was a hit with all who ate it. The butter leak was worth it.

I couldn’t help but thinking as I ate it that it needed some almond extract in the filling though. I may give that a whirl next time. I have a version of this in my head that would involve an almond flavored filling (maybe via paste) and pears instead of apples. Mmmmmm. If it’s as delicious as I hope, I’ll share the recipe with you.

Of course, I also had a vision of pineapple cookies in my head yesterday. So I fiddled around in the kitchen and made what I thought would work as a soft pineapple frosted cookie. Nope. They were AWFUL! Tim loves pineapple and he didn’t even want to eat them. So awful. A pineapple failure. I threw them all away. What a waste. I hate kitchen failures like that. But now I am on a mission to make a chewy and delicious pineapple cookie. Fingers crossed.

Bavarian Apple Torte

For the Crust

1/2 cup butter, room temp

1/3 cup sugar

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp vanilla

Beat sugar, butter & vanilla together. Add flour and mix to combine. Press dough in to the bottom of a 9″ spring form pan. Set aside.

For the Filling

1 8oz box cream cheese (I always use lite)

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

Beat all the ingredients together and spread over the dough already in the pan. Set aside.

For the Apple Topping

5 cups peeled and thinly sliced apples

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

(1/4 cup sliced almonds to sprinkle on the top at the end of the baking.)

Mix apple, sugar and spices and pour over top of the cream cheese filling.

Bake at a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle the top with the sliced almonds. Bake 15 minutes more. Cool. Remove outside ring from spring form pan and cut into slices to serve. Serves 8.