Venetian Apple Cake

I have a few dozen recipes I’ve bookmarked in Dolce Italiano but unfortunately got a bit side-tracked during the holidays. But I’m back now. Last night I went to a friend’s house for dinner and I thought I’d bring a little something from the book for dessert. Angela from A Spoonful of Sugar had baked the Venetian Apple Cake back in November and had given it high marks so I thought I’d give it a go.

It comes together pretty easily once you grate the apple. Which I must say, I’ve never done before and I didn’t get much out of it, even after scraping the grater down, but I didn’t worry. I knew from reading Angela’s blog that the cake had the essence of apple, not big chunks, like most of the apple cakes I’ve made in the past. The only other thing I noted was that after grating the apple, while assembling the other ingredients, the apple turned, not unexpected but I wondered if it would affect the coloring of the cake. It doesn’t. The cake is golden and the apple fits right in – you don’t really see it. Lastly, the spices used (a combination of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg) give it a real autumnal flavor – yum!

Oh and Angela used something in England called half-fat butter. I found Land O Lakes Light Butter here but opted to go with the full fat version for my first crack at the cake. Gina, in the book says it serves 8 to 10 people. At 10 servings, it comes in at 8 Weight Watcher points per serving. At 12 though, it comes in at 6 points (we actually cut it into smaller slices – could have had 16 serving), definitely doable for a splurge dessert.

If I had used the light butter, at 12 servings, it would come in at 5 – not sure yet if it’s worth the savings. It looks like Angela made some other changes to get her per serving point down to 3 – smaller pan, cut things in half – one of these days, I’ll play around and figure it out. But in the meantime, I’ll enjoy what I baked.