This cake has three kinds of apple, no compromise

Are we seasonal creatures? A June study from the University of Michigan suggests we are: even with blackout curtains, LED bulbs and thermostats locked at 72, our circadian rhythms still sway with the light, sleeping longer in winter and less in summer, echoing the old agricultural logic our bodies once obeyed.

The implications are fascinating — for mood, metabolism, cardiovascular health — but the line that stuck with me came from study author Ruby Kim, a postdoctoral professor of mathematics: “Humans really are seasonal, even though we might not want to admit that in our modern context.”

Funny thing is, I think we do know this, maybe not consciously but somewhere deep in our bones. It’s there in our rituals and mythologies, our cravings and holidays. Many of them, if you trace them back far enough, began as celebrations of the harvest and the table. It’s the quiet thread that runs between the ache of late November and the relief of May. (I think of Linda Pastan’s poem “October,” where she describes feeling “like Daphne, standing / with my arms / outstretched / to the season,” that posture of surrender to inevitable change.)

The stories we tell and retell carry the same knowing. From Demeter mourning Persephone to the harvest holidays of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, we’ve always marked time through the land. The Japanese concept of kō, or micro-seasons, reads like a fieldworker’s prayer: fish emerge from ice; farmers drain fields; last frost, rice seedlings grow.

They invite us to notice, to belong to a moment as small and precise as frost dissolving on a leaf.

And even with all that being said, I found myself largely checked out from the passage of time during the pandemic. In those early weeks, when the streets were quiet and the coffee shops closed, days seemed to melt into one another. Just a slow, featureless stretch. Even as things opened up, the memory of that disorientation lingered, like a bad hangover. But sometime over this last winter — that numbing, hoary stretch between mid-February and March — I decided this might be the year to reclaim a bit of seasonal delight.

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It’s a decision that was partly spiritual: when the world feels unmoored, it seemed perhaps worth remembering that our predecessors relied on the seasons as enveloping promises of change. Partly whimsical: I let myself notice the little, absurd sparks of autumn that made me smile.

Recently, I pulled out my copy of “Gus Was a Friendly Ghost,” a children’s book in which Gus has somehow mastered an alarming number of cheese-based dishes. I stopped into a local yarn store when their sidewalk chalkboard advertised “Pumpkin Spice Mohair,” which made me laugh out loud on the street and got me back into crocheting (scarf in progress; report to follow).

(Ashlie Stevens ) A good book and a beaded ghost

And at a resale shop, I found a tiny beaded ghost, about the size of my palm, slightly battered but perfectly poised to live on a black sweatshirt or tote; for now, he resides in the front pocket of my work binder.

Naturally, this little season of delights pulled me back to the kitchen. Baking has always been my way of keeping time. It’s slow, sensory and satisfying, from mixing to folding to heating. Over the next month on The Bite, Salon’s food newsletter, I’ll share four recipes that celebrate autumn produce — apples, pumpkin, pears and figs — each designed for weeknights, with store-bought shortcuts where they make sense.

We begin with a triple-apple snacking cake.

It features apples in three forms: a tender, applesauce-sweetened cake; diced, spiced roasted apples; and a tangy, fragrant apple butter–cream cheese frosting. You could cheat with a boxed cake mix, but the approach I love balances ease with real flavor: homemade batter, plus an upgraded store-bought cream cheese frosting. Just a few tweaks and it tastes homemade, I promise.

(Ashlie Stevens ) Triple apple snacking cake

The Cake

Warm, cozy spices take center stage: brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, a little orange zest. With butter, eggs and a full cup of unsweetened applesauce, the crumb is soft, tender and irresistible. I kept this a snacking cake — single-layered, baked in a 9×13-inch pan, so it’s easy to slice, serve and eat.

The Roasted Apples

One or two firm baking apples — Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, Granny Smith — get peeled or left unpeeled (I like the color and convenience of keeping the skin on) and diced. Toss them on a parchment-lined sheet, drizzle with a bit of butter, and dust with cinnamon and a pinch of sea salt. Roast just until tender and lightly caramelized, about 15 minutes. These go straight into the batter, carrying pockets of sweet-tart apple flavor through the cake.

The Frosting

Of course, you could make your own cream cheese frosting (Alton Brown has a great one) and your own apple butter (Alison Roman’s is beautiful), but for a weeknight-friendly version, store-bought works beautifully. I prefer Duncan Hines frosting over Pillsbury — it’s tangier — and I fold in about ¼ cup Murray’s Heirloom Apple Butter, a pinch of salt, a splash of vanilla and the zest of an orange. It makes a frosting that’s glossy, aromatic, and just sweet enough to balance the apples.

This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. If you enjoyed it and would like more essays, recipes, technique explainers and interviews sent straight to your inbox, subscribe here.