The Little King Apple Torte

By Jeremy King

First published by the New York Times in 1983, Marian Burros’s Plum Torte is a legendary, almost too-simple-to-believe dessert recipe that every chef and many home cooks I know have in their back pockets. The recipe is versatile (I’ve switched out plums for rhubarb, berries, peaches, and here, apples) and, it leaves enough room for interpretation to train any cook to trust their own intuition and experiment with the cooking vessels and ingredients they have on hand.

Below is a recipe inspired by the torte with a few tweaks to suit my taste, the season, and, to highlight a beautiful product—Apple Cider Syrup, from Woods Cider Mill in Springfield, Vermont, now available at Little King. The Cider Syrup is a mixture of maple syrup and boiled apple cider concentrate. It is delicious when used anywhere you would maple syrup, and, here, intensifies the apples’ flavor while adding natural sweetness and the delicate notes of maple. Burros’s original recipe can be found in the NYT Cooking archive.

To season the fruit:

• 2-3 apples, cored and cut into 16ths
• 2 tbsp cider syrup
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1/4 ts. Pumpkin pie spice
• Pinch sea salt

To prepare the torte batter:

• 1/2 c. Dark brown sugar
• 1/2 c. Cane sugar
• 1/2 c. Unsalted butter, softened

• 2 eggs, room temperature

• 3/4 c. All purpose flour
• 1/4 c. Spelt flour
• 1 ts. Baking powder
• 1/8 ts. Sea salt

1. Wash the apples and cut them in quarters. Cut out the core diagonally, and cut each quarter into fourths. I left the peel on, but feel free to peel the apples and experiment with the shape and size of the fruit to suit your taste. Toss the apples with cider syrup, 2 tbsp. Brown sugar, lemon juice, pumpkin pie spice, and a pinch of sea salt. Again, experiment with seasoning the fruit! You can omit the lemon juice, add vanilla extract, change out the spice mix! Endless options. Let the apples macerate in the seasonings for a least one hour before baking, but up to 12 hours in the fridge.
2. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350F and grease a baking vessel. I have made this torte in a 8” round cake pan, a 10” round cake pan, a 8”x8” glass dish, a pie pan, and a loaf pan. They all work! The final depth and form will be effected and the baking time will change, but, as all of our home ovens act very differently, I always advocate for learning to tell when something is done beyond just following the time on a recipe to a t.
3. Cream the dark brown sugar, cane sugar, and butter until the sugar granules have nearly dissolved and the mixture has lightened in color, about 5 minutes at medium low speed in a stand mixture, 10-15 minutes if creaming with a fork by hand.
4. Add in one egg at a time, incorporating each egg completely before adding the next. Then add the dry ingredients and mix just until the mixture has come together. Scrape the bottom of the bowl if using a stand mixer and ensure there are no pockets of unmixed ingredients in the bowl.
5. Transfer the batter to the baking vessel, top with the fruit and all liquid in the bowl. Bake until a tester comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, but no raw batter. Check after 45 minutes in the oven. Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving! If it’s not sweet enough for you dust some powdered sugar on top!