Spiced Apple Cake With Tahini Pomegranate Glaze

Posted on: September 12, 2020. Updated on: July 12, 2023.

by Carolina Gelen

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If this cake doesn’t scream Rosh Hashanah, I don’t know what does! This is the perfect fall bundt cake, it’s got all the warm spices, all the nuttiness from the oats and it’s super versatile. Don’t like tahini? Add a chocolate glaze on top. Sprinkle some nuts to the batter and take this cake to the next level.

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Spiced Apple Cake With Tahini Pomegranate Glaze

5 / 5. from 2

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5 / 5. from 2

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Ingredients

The Cake: Wet Ingredients

  • 800 grams or 1.8 lb honey crisp apples (or any type of sweet red apple)
  • 8 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • the juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2/3 cup apple juice (from the freshly grated apples)
  • 2/3 cup neutral oil, plusmore for greasing the baking tin
  • 2/3 cup honey
  • 2 eggs

The Cake: Dry Ingredients

  • 1/2 to 1 tablespoon cinnamon (to taste)
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon cardamom or 3-4 cardamom pods
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup rolled oats

Glaze And Toppings: Pink Pomegranate Glaze

  • the juice of 1/8 to 1/4 pomegranate
  • 2/3 cup powdered sugar

Glaze And Toppings: Tahini Glaze

  • 1/3 cup tahini
  • 1/3 cup powdered sugar
  • juice of 1/2 lemon
  • water

Additional Toppings

  • the seeds from 3/4 pomegranate (the leftover pomegranate from making the glaze)
  • mint leaves
  • honey

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven at 375°F or 190°C.
  2. Wash all the apples and grate them in a bowl. Squeeze all the juice out of them, using a sieve, towel or simply your hands, in a different container and set aside.
  3. In the bowl with the freshly squeezed grated apples, add all the wet ingredients: eggs, oil, lemon juice, honey, sugar, vanilla and apple juice (measured from the freshly squeezed apple juice).
  4. Next, add the cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, salt and baking soda to the batter and mix.
  5. The last step is to incorporate the dry ingredients into the batter: simply add in the all purpose flour, rolled oats and baking powder into the mixture and gently mix until there are no more dry spots.
  6. Grease your baking tin with some oil and sprinkle a little bit of flour all around the tin, to prevent the cake from sticking. Pour all the batter in and bake the cake for 35-50 minutes, but make sure to check on it from time to time. Poke a skewer in it, if it comes out clean, the cake should be ready. The cake can be made ahead 1-2 days before serving it.
  7. For the pomegranate glaze, simply mix the powdered sugar with a little bit of  freshly squeezed pomegranate juice at a time. The glaze should be runny, but still thick, it should have a similar consistency to tahini.
  8. For the tahini glaze, simply mix the lemon juice with the tahini. That will make the tahini become all grainy. Start adding 1 teaspoon of water to the tahini at a time, and mix until the mixture becomes smooth again. Once it is all smooth, add the powdered sugar to the bowl and mix until that has dissolved.
  9. Once the cake has completely cooled down, drizzle the tahini glaze all over it, then the pink pomegranate one and top it all off with the remaining pomegranate seeds and mint leaves. Drizzle some honey on there for good measure and serve with some ice cream on the side and enjoy!If you plan on making this ahead, I would just drizzle the glaze on 1-2 hours before serving it!

Carolina Gelen

You may have seen my work on TV, Food Network, NYT Cooking, Food52 and more. I make recipes more fun and accessible for home cooks. I immigrated to the US from Transylvania, Romania—where I lived most of my life—in 2021 to pursue my passion for cooking full-time. Here you’ll find a collection of approachable recipes, from weeknight dinners to desserts, you’ll come back to over and over again. Some of my most popular recipes include my chicken paprikash, orange chicken roast with fennel and shallots or butter beans all vodka. Some recipes are inspired by my Romanian-Hungarian upbringing, and most definitely all come with that Transylvanian resourcefulness! I love a good thrift, so make sure to catch my thrift hauls every Sunday on my Instagram!

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3 thoughts on "Spiced Apple Cake With Tahini Pomegranate Glaze"

  1. Amna says:

    Please provide metric measurements too 🥺

  2. Mallory says:

    I’ve got a bunch of cooking apples. Do you think those would work? Also I’m wondering what to do if I only have cardamom pods, not ground cardamom. Thanks! Can’t wait to try this!

    1. Carolina says:

      Those apples should work. For the cardamom, I would crush the seeds of 3 to 4 cardamom pods in a mortar and pestle or process them in a blender to get them ground 🙂