I should have stayed in bed Apple Cake

Dang.

I've recovered from my stomach flu and am ready to bake. I set up all the ingredients last night for the Williams-Sonoma Apple Cake. I made this cake before. I thought it would be an easy, delicious Friday morning cake.

I should have stayed in bed.

I woke up at 4:00 AM. Yes, not only am I trying to teach myself how to bake, I've decided to keep baker's hours too. :)

Shredded apples.

Combined apples with cinnamon sugar mixture.

Beat together eggs, sugar, cake flour, oil, vanilla...yada yada. All that normal stuff. Layered cinnamon sugar mixture. Popped into the oven.

I went back to bed for 50 minutes. Let it cook for 60 minutes. I thought the cake tester came out clean, but it was hard to tell because of the hard shell on top...(hum, probably the start of my problem...)

After it comes out of the over, I let it sit for 20 minutes and then unmold from the tube pan. My plan was to invert to back to onto the rack....but the internal workings just totally collapsed. The center wasn't cooked. Ugh! You drain the apple-cinnamon-sugar mixture before adding it to the dough...perhaps they didn't drain long enough?

Oh well. I'll try again later! Luckily, Jessica gave me her guest blog entry so you can enjoy that instead of crazy disaster photos!

Happy Chinese New Year!!