Recipe: Fresh Apple Cake with Carmel Frosting

Good books and good food - what a combination! Occasionally, I'll post links to recipes here since it's always nice to have a snack when you're reading.

This is a great recipe for fall: Fresh Apple Cake with Carmel Frosting. My father-in-law shared a similar recipe with me when my husband and I were engaged, but somehow it got lost in the intervening years. The frosting is like fudge, and this recipe calls for cooking the butter and brown sugar. I assure you this is a much better method than trying to follow typical buttercream instructions and beat the butter and brown sugar until the sugar dissolves. The abbreviated recipe I got from my father-in-law only listed the frosting ingredients, so I had pretty grainy frosting, not realizing it needed to be cooked. This is just as good as I remember it - maybe even better with these changes:

1. Substitute unsweetened applesauce for 1/2 - 2/3 of the oil (I used 3/4 cup of applesauce and 3/4 cup of canola oil, but a 1 cup to 1/2 cup ratio would probably work fine, too).
2. Add 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of corriander to dry ingredients.
3. Omit pecans.
4. For frosting, boil butter and brown sugar for at least 2 minutes; rice milk worked fine for dairy-free diet.