Buttery, sugary apples and pecans crown a fluffy biscuit cake. It's the best part of a good sticky bun without all of the work!
Course Breakfast, Dessert, Snack
Cuisine American
Keyword Apples, Biscuits, Cake, Pecans
Prep Time 20 minutesminutes
Cook Time 25 minutesminutes
Servings 8
Ingredients
½lemon
2mediumapples
½tspground cinnamon
½tspground ginger
¼tspground nutmegfreshly grated is best
4tbspbutter
½cupbrown sugar
½cuptoasted pecanschopped
½cupbutter
2cupsall-purpose flour
2tbspgranulated sugar
2tspbaking powder
½tspbaking soda
½tspKosher salt
½tspground cinnamon
½tspground ginger
¼tspnutmeg
1 cupbuttermilkcold
Instructions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray a 9-inch round cake pan with non-stick cooking spray or rub with butter. Line with a round piece of parchment paper that will fit your pan.
Core the apples and cut into thin slices. Put the slices in a large mixing bowl and squeeze the lemon over them. Toss to coat. Add the cinnamon, ground ginger, and nutmeg. Toss to coat so that all of the slices are coated well.
Melt the butter in a small bowl. Once the butter is melted, add the brown sugar. Whisk until the butter and brown sugar is well combined. Pour into your pan and sprinkle the pecans over the sugar.
Lay the apples over the pecans in an even layer — I used a radial pattern, but do whatever looks pretty to you.
Make the biscuit cake. Melt the stick of butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Once melted, take off of the heat and let cool a bit while you build the rest of the batter.Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a large bowl.In another bowl, add the buttermilk. Slowly stir in the melted butter. The mixture will get clumpy and this is exactly what you want. The cool thing about this recipe is that the buttermilk chills the butter into little beads of fat — this is what makes the biscuit fluffy because the butter beads release steam when cooking which makes the biscuits flaky.Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and stir just until combined and there’s no dry flour left in the bowl.
Use a large disher or large spoon to drop biscuits over the apple topping evenly. Use your fingers or an offset spatula to spread the biscuits into a layer out to the sides of the cake pan.
Bake for 25 minutes or until the biscuits cake is golden brown and registers 190 degrees on a thermometer. As soon as this comes out of the oven, place a plate over the cake pan, and flip the cake out. There may be a little of the topping that sticks to the pan, but just scrape it off and add to the top of the cake. You can serve this immediately, warm, or at room temperature.
Notes
Choose a tart & sweet apple like a Macintosh, Honeycrisp, or Granny Smith.
To toast your pecans, before chopping, place pecans on a pan in a 350F degree oven for 7 minutes. They will start smelling very nutty when they are done. Toasting gives the pecans an incredible nutty flavor and extra crunchy texture.
You can use an 8-inch round or 8x8 square pan if you don't have a 9-inch cake pan.