Apple and Cinnamon Crumble Tart

We had my mum and Wolfgang over for dinner tonight to say thanks for all their help. Seriously, I don't know how we would have survived without them during the past few weeks. Almost all the moving boxes have disappeared and our apartment is starting to look really cozy - just in time for Christmas. For dinner, Edi cooked a wonderful pork roast and, as usual, I took care of dessert. When browsing through my baking books, I had some sort of festive cake in mind. This recipe here sounded just right to me (besides, when can you ever go wrong with the combination of apples and cinnamon?!). With a dollop of whipped cream, a slice of this cake is just the right thing on a winter day.

Recipe

(slightly adapted from "Weihnachten mit Fräulein Klein")

for the dough:

125g soft butter

1/2 vanilla pod

110g sugar

2 eggs

125g flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon grated zest of an orange

for the apples:

2-3 apples (recipe says 4 mid-sized apples, 2 apples were enough in my case)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

for the crumble:

150g flour

90g brown sugar

100g butter, cold

1/2 vanilla pod

You can use either a round baking tin of 24cm diameter of a square one (11x35cm). 

In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar and the seeds of half a vanilla pod with an electric hand mixer until fluffy. Add the two eggs and beat again. Add zest of one grated orange and beat. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder and cinnamon. Add this to your batter and beat until all is well combined. Fill this dough into your tart tin. 

Peel your apples (or don't, we were too lazy for that), core them and cut into 3-4mm slices. Put them into a bowl and combine with the cinnamon. Arrange your apple slices on the dough.

For the crumble, combine flour, sugar and scraped out seeds of a vanilla pod in a bowl. Dice the cold butter, add and with your fingers, rub until your have a crumbly batter. Scatter over your tart.

Bake the tart for about 40-45 minutes. If it tends to brown too much towards the end, cover with aluminium foil. Test with a wooden skewer whether your cake is done.

Take out of the oven, let cool. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Notes:

• While my cake was in the oven, I realized that I probably had a bit too much dough for my tin and it spilled over the edges while baking. Nothing to worry too much about, though. I just trimmed the not so nice looking edges with a knife after baking.
• I also had too much of the crumble batter, so one could probably prepare a little less.
• Fräulein Klein originally bakes this cake with speculoos spice instead of cinnamon. I even opted for cinnamon buds (Zimtblüte) which I like a lot.