Vegan Apple Cake

I’m so excited to share this easy vegan apple cake – it’s inspired by the one cake my Omi bakes, an apple rye. It’s a healthier spin on a traditional German apple cake and late-season apples and hazelnuts are in abundance at this time of year.

This cake is adapted from the fig cake recipe I shared just after we moved to Germany in 2016. I’ve replaced part of the coconut sugar with maple syrup and used lots of cinnamon in place of cardamom, giving more of a late autumnal flavour.

The texture here is definitely more of a coffee cake than a sponge. It’s not super light and fluffy because of the added hazelnut meal – not sticky or heavy but certainly on the edge of dense. And those chunky apples, so good.

You can easily make your own hazelnut meal if you can’t buy it in stores. More on this below, and substitutions if needed.

Why You Should Try This Recipe

It’s a flavourful, northern-style apple cake with loads of warm flavours and apple in every bite. If you like a lot of apple in your cake, you’ll love this.

• Lots of texture variation: with the crunchy nuts in the topping contrasting with the melt-in-your-mouth apples and soft cake crumb, every bite is different.
• It’s not too sweet: with slightly less sweet coconut sugar and maple syrup, the apples can really shine here.
• You can use windfall apples: while they’re not ideal for canning, windfall apples are perfect for baking, and good in this cake. Lots of people will have windfalls out on the curb at this time of year – grab a handful.

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

• Hazelnut meal: sub almond meal or make sunflower seed meal for a nut-free option.
• Oat milk: use any non-dairy milk barring canned coconut milk. Make sure it’s unsweetened and unflavoured.
• Spelt flour: as usual, plain white flour can be used in place of spelt if preferred. I haven’t tried making this cake gluten-free.
• Cinnamon: use another spice or spice blend if preferred. Cardamom would be good, as would some added nutmeg or cloves.
• Olive oil: another light-tasting liquid oil can be subbed for olive oil. Don’t use coconut oil.

Step by Step

1. Prepare the apples by coring and halving them, then very thinly slicing partway through each half.
2. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

3. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients until combined.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until just combined.
5. Transfer the batter to a greased spring-form pan and smooth.
6. Top with the prepared apples and a handful of hazelnuts, then bake until golden.

If you can’t see the recipe video, please watch it here on YouTube instead.

Recipe Notes

The way the apples are cut in this recipe are how you’ll often see them arranged on this type of German apple cake, almost like a hasselback potato. It means the apples cook all the way through without making them too soft. You get big pieces of apple in each slice and it looks beautiful. The baking time is long enough that the apples become soft enough to cut through with a fork, perfect for afternoon coffee.

Be sure to bake the cake on the centre rack of the oven. If it’s too close to the top element, the apples will brown too much and the hazelnuts might burn.

This is baked in a larger spring-form pan and I don’t really recommend using a smaller one, as it can cause a claggy crumb. While you can use a slightly smaller one please be aware that the cake will be dense.

Use a good baking apple that’s quite tart and solid. Avoid varieties like McIntosh (which used to be good but is now mealy). I prefer to use Boskoop for this and virtually any other baked apple recipe as it keeps its shape after baking and has a superior flavour.

How to Store

Storage: the cake will soften slightly as it’s stored due to the moisture in the apples. I recommend refrigerating any leftover cake in a sealed container for up to three days, as it doesn’t keep well at room temperature for more than a day.

Freezing: place the cooled cake in an airtight container and freeze for up to three months.

Expert Tips

• Make your own hazelnut meal: you can do this very simply in a food processor or blender that’s approved for dry ingredients. Simply mix on high speed until a fine meal forms.
• Use a good apple type: while the apples don’t need to be absolutely perfect (bruises etc. can simply be cut out) it should be a good flavourful variety that doesn’t get too soft when cooked. I’m not a granny smith fan but if you like them they would work here.
• Don’t over mix: as with any spelt flour recipe, avoid over mixing or risk a tough bake. For a soft crumb, mix until just combined and no longer.
• Use a corer: if you have an apple corer, certainly put it to good use here, as it makes halving the apples and slicing as needed quite a bit easier.

More Apple Recipes

Apple Crumble Cake
Healthy Baked Apples
Hazelnut Apple Crisp
Apple Crumble Bars

If you make this Vegan Apple Cake or any other vegetarian desserts on Occasionally Eggs, please take a moment to rate the recipe and leave a comment below. It’s such a help to others who want to try the recipe. For more OE, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, purchase the Occasionally Eggs cookbook, or subscribe for new posts via email.

This was first shared in November 2018. It has been updated with some very slight changes (improvements) to the recipe and new step-by-step pictures as of October 2022.