Apple-Spice Layer Cake with Creamy Goat Cheese Frosting

I love to bake, but I'm also inherently lazy. I often prefer to doctor cake mixes instead of baking from scratch. I received a copy of the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook as a gift, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to expand my baking repertoire.

It's mid-September, which means apple season in my neck of the woods. My husband and I have a tradition of going apple-picking at a local farm every fall. We just took our first trip to the farm, and we picked several pounds of delicious early apples - specifically, Jonagold (for baking) and Cameo (for munching). Naturally, I wanted my first Martha recipe to involve apples.

Apple pie seemed too obvious, but then my eyes alighted upon a recipe for an Apple Spice Layer Cake with a Creamy Goat Cheese Frosting. I LOVE goat cheese. I can eat an entire log of it in one sitting. I also love cream cheese frostings on cakes, but they're usually limited to carrot cakes, and I'm not a huge fan of those (I just don't think carrots belong in dessert). I was very excited to try this recipe.

The first step of the recipe is to make, essentially, homemade chunky applesauce. First, I caramelized some sugar in a medium saucepan, and then added chunks of apples and a little bit of lemon juice. I cooked the apples down until they were soft and mushy.

After about 5 more minutes of cooking, I had fresh, homemade applesauce!

While I let the applesauce cool, I mixed together the dry ingredients, including the spices. I increased the spices called for in the recipe, because I've learned that I generally like a little extra cinnamon and nutmeg in my baked goods. I also used grated fresh nutmeg, which smells and tastes fantastic.

I used my Kitchenaid stand mixer to beat together butter, sugar, honey, and eggs. If you don't have a Kitchenaid mixer, and you plan to do a significant amount of baking, you should run out and buy one immediately. It is, by far, my favorite small appliance. After beating in all of the eggs, I added the dry ingredients and mixed on a slower speed. I watched carefully to make sure I didn't overmix the batter.

I divided the batter evenly between two cake pans, and while the cakes were in the oven, I turned my attention to the frosting. It's a very simple recipe - just fresh goat cheese, cream cheese, and powdered sugar, beaten together in my beloved Kitchenaid mixer.

Side note: I'm a very impatient person, and I usually have an incredibly hard time waiting for cakes to cool completely before frosting them. I've tried to frost my share of warm cakes, and I know it causes them to fall apart into a crumbly mess, so I SHOULD KNOW BETTER. But I still don't want to wait 2 hours to frost my cakes. I took a tip from Martha's book, and after I cooled my cake layers on wire racks for 20 minutes, I wrapped them in plastic wrap and stuck them in the fridge for another 40 minutes. Voila - perfectly cooled cakes in half the time!

Per Martha's suggestion, I made caramelized apple slices to decorate the top of my cake. The glazed apples were tasty and delicious! I also topped the cake with a sprinkling of candied ginger, which I had in my pantry.