Irish Apple Cake

OMG you have to make this, it's probably even better as written with dairy.  But because I can't have any dairy, we made a dairy free version, and let me tell you, the four of us all had at least 2 slices.

I got the recipe for the Irish Apple Cake from my friend's blog, she featured it as one of her Friday Fancies, it looked intriguing so I clicked on the recipe and wanted to make it, but didn't have a when or for what.  Fast forward to Friday morning after brunch, C, his roommate M, his girlfriend E, and I had brunch at True Food (juice was good, food and service need some work) and discussed dinner.  M had a salmon in the freezer to cook, so we ended up offering to make dessert, and voila, we had an occasion to make the cake.

To make it dairy free we used soy milk instead of all the milk, and Earth Balance instead of butter.   The only thing I added was some cinnamon, about 1 tsp, and doubled the rest of the spices because C likes spices.  Have to be careful letting him add spices or it will triple!  Everything else was the same for the cake and into the oven it went to cook while we enjoyed the salmon.  We could smell it as it finished, so delicious!  To make the custard with soy milk I ended up adding 1 tsp of cornstarch at the end step to help thicken it as I think cows milk has a thickening component to it that soy milk doesn't.

We served large slices, covered with custard sauce and each one of us demolished our slice.  It had the right amount of sugar and spice, wasn't too sweet, and the apples were warm and soft and melted in your mouth.  Heaven on a plate (and that phrase is normally reserved for chocolate for me).

Hope you get a chance to make this for St. Patrick's Day, it's a great representation of true Irish food!