Caramel Apple Layer Cake

     Call me weird but when I'm stressed, I bake. The more stressed I am the more complicated my baking gets. So, of course, after a particularly stressful day last week, I made this cake! Consisting of apple cake, apple pie filling between the layers, and coated in caramel buttercream and caramel sauce, this is sure to wow anyone! All these cozy flavors also make it the perfect dessert to use up all of your fall apples or just to eat as a sweet treat on a crisp autumn day. 

    I start my cake by beating together, brown sugar, eggs, browned butter, milk, vanilla, and applesauce. I like to use chunky homemade applesauce so that you can get a few apple chunks in your cake but you can just use the plain store bought. Once all of that is well combined, I break out my sifter and addmy flour, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon. The reason sifting is so important, is it breaks up any chunks your flour might have and helps distribute the baking powder and soda. This makes your final cake way fluffier. 

    When that's all sifted, I mix everything until just barely combined. It is very important not to over mix. Before I pour my batter into my cake pans, I grease them and coat them in a very light layer of flour so that the cakes don't stick. Then, I divide my batter between two pans and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes. 

    While my cakes are baking and cooling I get going on all of my other components. The first thing I make is my apple pie filling. You can use store bought or homemade. To make homemade all you have to do is add apples, cinnamon, and sugar to a pan and simmer until your apples are soft. Then, you add a cornstarch slurry to your mixture as it cools down to make sure it thickens up a bit. 

    Once my pie filling is done (if I decide to make it from scratch) I make my caramel sauce. You can also just buy this from the store but, like any good impulse cake, you need to be able to make it with normal pantry stuff!

    I make my caramel sauce by first melting my sugar in a small saucepan before adding water, butter, heavy cream, vanilla, and salt. I add in everything one ingredient at a time and whisk in between each to make sure everything gets incorporated. Once that is done I let it cool in the pot until it is room temperature. From there I either put it into a container to use later or just use it straight away on my cake. 

        My caramel buttercream uses part of my caramel sauce that I just made. To make the buttercream, I beat my butter for about 10-20 minutes or until it is super smooth. Then, I add my powdered sugar and caramel sauce and beat that until everything is incorporated and smooth.     

    The hardest part of all of this is waiting for all of the parts to cool. However, it is extremely necessary to wait or else your cake will slump over and end up a big mushy mess. To assemble my cake, I first take out one of the rounds and place it on my plate. I then spread out a thin layer of buttercream with a bit of a ridge around the edges to act as a dam for the pie filling. Once that is done I pile on as much pie filling as I can without everything totally spilling over. 

    After placing the second round on top, I make sure it is centered, then start spreading the rest of the buttercream. I am not a great cake decorator so I only did a crumb coat and "decorated" it with extra pie filling on top. To make sure my extra pie filling didn't make too much of a mess, I also made a " dam" around the top with the buttercream. 

    To finish off my cake, I took the extra caramel sauce, and drizzled it over my entire cake. Next time I make this I will have it drip off of the sides because it ended up melding with the apple pie filling and doesn't stick out as much as I wanted it to. 

        This final cake is so decadent and rich and sweet but also refreshing with a bite of apple it reminds me of fall with every bite! I made this cake and stuck it in the fridge so that my husband and I could keep eating it days later. The pie filling and caramel made it so that the cake stayed amazingly moist 5 days later!

    What did you think of this recipe? Questions? Comments? Concerns? Use the comment section below!