Apple cake is a light, soft, spongy cake recipe perfect for both vegans and vegetarians. Made with whole wheat flour, this eggless apple cake recipe is baked to sweet, soft perfection in one pan and under an hour.
Table of Contents
Why This Recipe Works
This tasty, moist apple cake is the perfect quick and easy baking recipe. Made with whole wheat flour, raw sugar, ground spices, and a sweet apple puree, eggless apple cake is a dessert everyone can enjoy and feel good about.
Definitely healthier than your usual cakes, this eggless Cake Recipe is actually very light and a bit low in fat with mild apple flavors. I did not include butter and cooked with very little oil.
You can even make the recipe a bit more nutritious by experimenting with less oil and using multi grain flours or nut flours.
Perfect as a midday snack, this eggless apple cake recipe is originally adapted from my Applesauce Cake, which is another simple recipe where you just need to mix the ingredients with a spatula or spoon.
The only prep part of either of these recipes is making the apple puree, but after that, the baking is a breeze!
How to Make Apple Cake
Add Dry Ingredients
1. First, combine your flour, salt and seasonings in a sieve. Make sure you don’t miss any of these key ingredients:
- Whole wheat flour (1.5 cups or 180 grams)
- Salt, just a pinch
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg or nutmeg powder
- Optional additions: ½ teaspoon ground allspice and/or ¼ teaspoon ginger powder (ground ginger)
2. Next, add both ½ teaspoon baking soda and 1 teaspoon baking powder to the dry ingredient mixture. Additionally, it’s important to make sure that your leavening ingredients are fresh and active.
3. Then sift the dry ingredients twice and set aside.
Prepare to Bake
4. Now grease a round 7.5 or 8-inch pan with a neutral flavored oil. Alternatively, you can also line the pan with parchment. At this point, you should preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit) for 20 minutes.
Make Apple Puree
5. Next place 2 cups of chopped apples (rinsed, cored and peeled) and ¾ cup raw sugar in a blender cup or container.
6. Blend the apple and sugar mixture to a smooth and fine puree. There should be no chunks of apples!
You will see that the color of puree will darken, but there is nothing to worry.
Transfer Apple Puree
7. When blended smooth, use a spatula to pour the apple puree into a mixing bowl.
8. Now add ¼ cup oil and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract to the apple puree. I used sunflower oil, however, you can use any neutral flavored oil if needed.
NOTE: For a vegetarian option, use ¼ cup softened butter instead.
Add Liquids
9. Now pour ½ cup of water (at room temperature) or any nut milk (almond, cashew or lite coconut milk).
10. Add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, lemon juice or white vinegar.
Whisk Puree Mixture
11. Then with a wired whisk, stir this mixture briskly for 2 to 3 minutes. You want to make sure that all of the ingredients are evenly mixed.
Combine Wet and Dry Ingredients
12. Now add the sifted dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.
13. Gently mix or fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. When mixing the batter together, you want to avoid over working the batter.
Use light pressure and be patient because if you over-mix, your cake may not turn out as soft and fluffy. The batter has a medium flowing consistency.
NOTE: Break the large lumps of flour by tapping on them with the wired whisk. Tiny lumps are fine.
Pour Batter into Pan
14. Next, pour the batter in the prepared pan. Tap the pan lightly on your counter table to let the air bubbles pass — there is no need to spread the batter on top with a spatula, as the batter will spread out on its own.
Bake your Apple Cake
15. Finally, it is time to bake at 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit) for about fifty minutes to one hour. Yes, this cake DOES take a long time to bake — you may even need to add 10-15 minutes onto the cook time depending on your oven.
NOTE: Remember that oven temperatures vary, so check if the cake is done or not with a toothpick when the top looks golden.
16. Allow the apple cake to bake, then check its doneness with a wooden skewer. You will know your cake is done when the skewer comes out clean with no sticky batter on it.
17. When your eggless apple cake is done, place the baking pan on a wired tray and allow to cool at room temperature.
18. After cooling, gently use a butter knife to remove the vegan apple cake from the pan.
19. Finally, it is time to serve and enjoy your apple cake! Serve at room temperature with tea or coffee.
Storage and Leftovers
Tightly wrap the cake in a cling film or keep the cake in an airtight container and refrigerate. Your leftover apple cake can be refrigerated for a week and frozen for a month.
Expert Tips
Ingredient Swaps
- Make it healthy. To make this cake even a little more healthy, you can use wholemeal flour and less oil.
- Sub your sugar. I used raw sugar in this vegan apple cake recipe, but you can also substitute white sugar, coconut sugar, palm sugar. Alternatively, you can use jaggery or maple syrup in place of sugar, as well.
- Apple puree. If you have ready to use homemade apple puree, add ¾ cup of it. You could also replace apple puree with ¾ cup of apple sauce. Depending on whether your apple sauce is sweetened or not, you can alter the proportions of sugar as desired.
- Flour. If you are not a fan of whole wheat flour, then sub it with all-purpose flour or pastry flour. Add about ¼ to ⅓ cup of water if using these flours.
Baking Notes
- Keep an eye on the cake. If the top is becoming too brown and the cake is not baked, then cover with a parchment paper and continue to bake.
- Watch the sweetness. Because you aren’t using sour or tangy apples, there’s a lot of natural sweetness in this cake. You can always balance out that sweetness level by reducing your added sugar to ½ cup.
- Check the batter. Before baking, the apple cake batter should have a medium flowing-consistency — not thick, but not liquid. The batter should feel light and have volume.
- Time for baking. Each oven works differently. This vegan apple cake takes more time to bake than your usual cakes. So consider a time period of 45 minutes to 1 hour or more if needed while baking. When you see the top has become golden, check with a wooden skewer. If you see sticky batter on the skewer, then continue to bake further.
FAQs
I use atta or the whole wheat flour made with durum hard wheat. This is the same flour that we use to make rotis or parathas. I use organic whole wheat chakki ground atta which is basically stone ground flour. The recipe works well with any kind of whole meal flour. So you could use the whole wheat flour that is available in the US, Europe or the one you get in your country.
I have added raw sugar in the eggless apple cake, but it can be made with coconut sugar, palm sugar or palm jaggery or maple syrup. The cake would also taste good with brown sugar or powdered sugar.
It’s important to use sweet apples for this recipe, NOT sour or tangy apples. As a general rule of thumb, the redder the apple, the sweeter it is. Personally, I’m a fan of fuji, gala, and honeycrips apples.
A sieve is like a tiny strainer that helps to prevent clumps from getting into your dry ingredient mixture. When you sieve, you also sift, and sifting actually helps bring air into the flour, which makes your batter easier to mix and your vegan apple cake super fluffy.
More Cake Recipes to Try!
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Apple Cake Recipe
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
- 1.5 cups whole wheat flour – 180 grams
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon powder (ground cinnamon)
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- ¼ teaspoon ginger powder (ground ginger)
- ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg or ground nutmeg
For Apple Puree
- 2 cups chopped apples – 300 grams or 2 medium -sized
- ¾ cup raw sugar – 150 grams
Other Ingredients
- ½ cup water or any nut milk – at room temperature
- ¼ cup oil – use oil which has a neutral taste and flavor
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or lemon juice or white vinegar
Instructions
Sifting dry ingredients
- First, combine the flour, salt, ground spices, baking soda and baking powder in a sieve.
- Sift the dry ingredients twice and set aside.
- Brush or grease a round 7.5 to 8-inch pan with a neutral flavored oil. You can also line the pan with parchment. Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit) for 20 minutes.
Making apple puree
- Take the chopped apples (rinsed, cored and peeled) and raw sugar in a blender jar or container.
- Blend to a smooth purée without any chunks.
- Use a spatula to pour the apple puree into a mixing bowl.
Making liquid mixture
- Add oil, water, vanilla extract and apple cider vinegar or lemon juice.
- With a wired whisk, stir this mixture briskly for 2 to 3 minutes so that the oil is incorporated evenly in it.
- Add the sifted dry ingredients to this wet ingredients liquid mixture.
Mixing dry ingredients
- Gently mix the dry ingredients in the wet ingredients with light pressure from your hands. Don't over work the batter. It should feel light and have volume.
- The batter has a medium flowing consistency.
- Break large lumps of flour if any by tapping on them with wired whisk. Tiny lumps are fine in the batter.
- Pour the batter in the prepared pan.
Baking apple cake
- Bake at 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit) in a preheated oven for about 50 minutes to 1 hour.
- Remember that oven temperatures vary, so check if the cake is done or not with a toothpick when the top looks golden.
- Check the doneness with a wooden skewer. The skewer should come out clean with no sticky batter on it.
- Place the baking pan on a wired tray and cool the apple cake at room temperature.
- After cooling, gently use a butter knife to remove the cake from the pan.
- Slice and enjoy the apple cake. Serve the cake slices at room temperature with tea or coffee.
Storage and Leftovers
- Tightly wrap the cake in a cling film or keep the cake in an airtight container and refrigerate. Your leftover apple cake can be refrigerated for a week and frozen for a month.
Notes
- Baking: If the top crust becomes too brown and the cake is under baked, then cover with a parchment paper and continue to bake.
- Time for baking: Each oven works differently. This cake takes more time to bake than your usual cakes. So consider a time period of 45 minutes to 1 hour or more if needed while baking. When you see the top has become golden, check with a wooden skewer. If you see sticky batter on the skewer, then continue to bake further.
- Healthy variations: To make this cake even a little more healthy, you can experiment with multigrain flours, nut flours and less oil.
- Sugar substitute: I have used raw sugar, but you can substitute white sugar, coconut sugar, palm sugar. Alternatively, use jaggery or maple syrup in place of sugar, as well.
- Other flours: If you are not a fan of whole wheat flour, then replace it with all-purpose flour or pastry flour. Add about ¼ to ⅓ cup of water if using these flours.
- Whole wheat flour: I have used atta or the whole wheat flour made with durum hard wheat which we use to make roti or paratha. The recipe works well with any kind of whole wheat flour. So you could use the whole wheat flour that is available in the US, Europe or the one you get in your country.
- Apple puree: If using homemade apple puree, you can add ¾ cup of it or replace with ¾ cup of apple sauce. Depending on whether your apple sauce is sweetened or not, you can alter the proportions of sugar as desired.
- Sweetness: Because you aren’t using sour or tangy apples, there’s a lot of natural sweetness in this cake. You can always balance out that sweetness level by reducing your added sugar to ½ cup.
- Batter consistency: Before baking, the apple cake batter should have a medium flowing-consistency — not thick, but not liquid. The batter should feel light and have volume.
Nutrition Info (Approximate Values)
This apple cake recipe from the blog archives (July 2013) has been republished and updated on 2 February 2021 with a better recipe and newer photos.
Hello…
Wonderful blog. Have tried and referred recipes from here.. Thanks!
Got a general question, being new to baking started trying wheat jaggery cakes.
it comes out soft. But inside of cake is slightly oily and wet. Not dry and perfect like yours. What could be wrong?
Thanks for the feedback on the recipes you have tried. Try baking for some more time and that should help. The wetness is due to underbaking. Oven temperatures vary and no two ovens are the same. So in some oven the baking time is more and in some it is less. So you can bake for some more minutes and that should help.
Thanks for the reply. Will keep an eye for it next time.
Welcome.
Dear Dassana Mme,
Hope you can please answer my query regarding this recipe. Can we increase the quantity of apples to three if we wish to? Your recipes are inspiring and I have been following them all the time till date. Awesome! Keep it going.
Please help me with this query. Thanking you,
Regards,
Tvisha
thanks a lot tvisha. increasing the apples will increase the moisture in the cake. thus a result the cake might get soggy and too soft. so i would suggest to stick to the number of apples as mentioned in the recipe.
@ pooja: you follow the recipe instructions ditto. .then you’ll get it perfect.
Hey dassana . . I made it today. . It was perfect. I loved it more as it’s taking less oil . But 1 doubt is that I am not getting any smell of apple or feeling of apple. I have chopped Apple very finely. .is that the reason? ? Like in mosambi cake flavour was coming so much but in this.. nothing.
thanks urmi. the aroma of apples are not felt. if more apples are added, then the aroma of apple will be felt. hope this helps.
Hi dassana, I have been trying your recipes and most of them esp the eggless chocolate cake have turned out really well. But I had a problem with this one. When I inserted the knife, it came out dry, but the cake remained undercooked . It did not rise at all and was lumpy. The one thing I did different was add about 1/2 cup water more as the batter was paste-like. But even after adding water, the consistency remained uneven. Could you suggest what could have gone wrong? Could you tell me what should be the consistency of the batter-dropping or dripping/? Thanks in advance
pooja, from what you describe it looks like the batter was over mixed and gluten strands have formed. when this happens, the knife comes out clean and the cake looks undercooked. actually it is cooked but is like cooked atta and there is no porousness or lightness in the texture. adding more water is fine and it also depends on the quality of both maida and atta. the consistency of the batter is medium consistency which is pourable in the pan. hope this helps.
Hi dassana, I think overmixing would be the problem , because in trying to get what I thought should be the right consistency , I kept adding water and mixing it.. will try again and get back to you about how it turned out, thank you for your response !
thanks pooja and welcome. do let me know if you face any problem later.
Hi .. I have been ur big fan and have tried so many receptors of urs, here I was jus wondering that I don’t have cinnamon or nutmeg powder so what can be done. Is there any replacement or it can work without these powders
thanks meenal. just skip them. you can add cardamom powder also.
Hello ma’am,
Just wanted to tell you a big thanks for being an amazing mentor for hopeless cooks like me. I have been following your site since almost 4-5 years, not just for recipes, but also to understand the science behind cooking. And I have never had any difficulty in accessing your page even on a terrible network. The hard work put in by your team is really commendable. It is my perfect one-stop school to explore the wonderful world of cooking, especially because of your tips and memories. Extremely sorry that I couldn’t ever comment before. But a big thanks for making me love cooking!!
P.S. : Your banana cake recipe was amazing. Just bought some apples for the next cake to be made tomorrow. 🙂
Welcome Shraddha. Thanks a lot for this awesome feedback. Glad to know that we could you help you in learning new recipes and cooking. Its always nice to read positive feedback specially from readers who are connected for a long time.
Can we add normal sugar or is it better to use coconut sugar?
Priya, you can add normal sugar also.
Hi Dassana,
Want to try this cake but one ques can I use vinegar instead of lemon juice. Have tried many of ur cakes and recipes. They were awesome.
Thank u
hema, you can use vinegar instead of lemon juice. thanks for the feedback on the cake recipes you have tried.
Can i use 2 cups of whole wheat instead of 1 cup wheat and 1 cup maida?? For much time should i bake if its a whole wheat cake?
you can use. but add more water as whole wheat flour absorbs more water. 1 cup might not give a batter consistency. baking time depends on the oven size, capacity and type. but an average time of 35 to 55 minutes can be considered.
Tried the cake and it was very nice. Few things I changed – put 3 medium to large apples instead of 1, reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup and increased the cinnamon. Your recipes are always good. Thank you.
thats a good variation. glad the recipe turned out well preeti.
Shall i add walnuts in apple cake
you can add walnuts. just mix the walnuts with a bit of dry flour and then add. this is so that they don’t sink at the bottom while baking.
Baked this cake tday.. Der was a power cut fr sumtime while baking was under process..The crust turned out to b hard… N evn aftr baking it fr adequate time i felt it was a lil uncooked.. I. Was not satisfied with the final outcome..What cud b wrong??
while baking if the electricity goes off, then the results do not come out good. as there is a drastic change in the temperature. so now nothing can be done. usually i avoid baking during the load shedding time. we have once a week every thursday.
Can we replace water with milk in the recipie??
yes you can.
Is it compulsory to add nutmeg n cinomon powder to make apple cake??
rizwana cinnamon powder goes well with apple cake. but you can add vanilla essence instead of nutmeg and cinnamon powder, hope this information helps you.
Hi, this one looks amazing! Tried baking this apple vegan cake. Followed the recipe by making complete 2 cups whole wheat flour and minus the cinnamon and nutmeg powder. Baked it in square pan, even baking after 60 mins, mine looks not cooked inside and the color is also not that great, where I could gone wrong? I did add 2 tsp oil extra than the oil mentioned in the recipe and added 1.5 cups of water.
mithu, when the cake looks like it has not cooked even after baking for a long time, this means the cake has cooked but has a dough like structure inside which makes us feel that its not cooked. there is not softness and lightness in the texture. this happens if the batter is mixed too much. the gluten strands are formed which give a dense texture in the cake.