Apple Kuchen With Honey and Ginger Recipe (2024)

Is the candied ginger a critical component or can it be omitted?

The recipe suggests a 9" pan, preferably springform. Yet the photo (gorgeous!) looks as if it was baked in a traditional glass pie dish. Can either work?

The apples in the farmers markets now are early varieties and make good applesauce but don't hold up for recipes like this coffee cake. Better go to the supermarket and buy Granny Smiths; just be sure you sprinkle that sugar all over them because they're so tart. By October the harder apples are at the farmers markets. Jonagold, Ida Red, Honey Crisp make good pie, baked apples, and kuchen.

Who said Rosh Hashanah desserts have to be parve? It is obviously far tastier with butter. If you feel the need to make it parve, go right ahead and substitute margerine. I think the editor is doing a great job. There are an awful lot of Jews out there (my family included) who celebrate the holidays with traditional meals and do not keep kosher.

Who won their church's apple dessert contest? Why I did. The first time I made this I followed the instructions and it was way underbaked, so I tried it again increasing the bake time to an hour like others recommended.

Yes, metric is wonderful. I've used it as a scientist most of my life. There is a place, however, for traditional measurements. One of our most treasured family recipes calls for a teacup of molasses. Cooking is more that a set of laboratory procedures.

I used a 10" glass pie dish and it seemed perfect.

This was a smash hit at my dinner!. Note: it was nowhere near done after 40 minutes in my oven.
After 40 minutes, I raised the temp to 350° and baked it for an additional 15 minutes.
It was attractive and had a depth and complexity of flavor. I'll definitely make this again.

What kind of apples would you recommend for baking this?

This tastes MUCH better the day after baking, when it has fully absorbed glaze. On day of baking, it's somewhat dry. Other notes: - use apples that get really soft when they bake, esp since the apples are not cooked prior to baking. - use candied ginger that comes in cube form (then cut into smaller chunks), rather than the flaked form.- I added 1T bourbon to sugar sprinkled on the apples and 2-3 T bourbon to glaze (with only 2T lemon juice). This was a great addition (as would be rum).

Not all Jews keep kosher and there are substitutes for butter and not all religious Jews are meat eaters!!

Even in Israeli cookbooks there are Rosh Hashanah cake recipes that include butter. See e.g. Shabatot Veh-chageem by Micky Shemo. For parve recipes, I suggest going to publications of Orthodox Judaism, and not the NYTimes.

We loved this cake, which is not too sweet, even with the glaze. Had only 2 apples, which seemed plenty. The ginger and lemon are a nice foil to the honey. Didn't find it dry at all. Did need to almost double the baking time, but but began checking at 45 mins.

All apple cakes are good but this one is very good. The only change I made was 2 teaspoons of ground ginger instead of 1 tablespoon of fresh grated ginger which I didn't have. I took 50 minutes to cook.

Made this per the recipe but added 1/8 c chopped walnuts atop the batter and used only 1/2 the glaze per reader comments. Prep took a long time. Many reviewers said to bake the cake a lot longer. I tried to use the 200-deg reviewer suggested guide but the cake became overdone already at 187-degrees. All our guests loved the cake, but my husband and I just found it so-so, prob because it was a bit dry.

Loved it!

Absolutely delicious. I used a 9-inch springform pan. It was the perfect size. I followed the recipe exactly. I made the cake twice in a week. It came out perfect each time. The only thing is it took a little longer to cook than indicated on the recipe. A favorite!

I subbed sugar with baking sugar alternative and it worked well. Definitely a keeper.

Delicious flavor, added double the ginger and lemon zest called for. Ended up being too dry as I let baking it in order for apples to be done. So essentially cake baked faster than apples. I think next time I’ll make apple slices super thin and perhaps smaller than quarters

The combination of ginger and apples is amazing! Everyone in my office enjoyed it. But I'd like to know - is there any trick how to keep apples the same size? Because they became smaller just after I left the pie to rest and they were kinda separated from the rest of the pie... Should I put the glaze on them immediately? Thankful for any advice!

This was a good cake with delicious flavor. At first I thought the batter was way too thick but it worked out just fine. I tried cooking for 50 minutes as suggested in comments and found it to be a bit over-baked so probably should have gone with 40-45 min. Left the apple peel on too

Didnt have ginger so I just added a tiny bit of ground ginger in the batter. Cake was delicious and lemony - mine didnt turn out super tender, but it was definitely yummy and beautiful.

I have this cake in the oven and will be serving tomorrow. Should I glaze it when it cools or wrap unglazed and glaze tomorrow?

Based on some of the recent comments, I was worried about how this cake would turn out, but it was excellent. Moist, flavorful and gorgeous - a bit of a showstopper, tbh. I followed the recipe as written and bake time and temp were right on for me. Three small apples fit perfectly on top of the cake in my 9" spring form pan. One comment said this tasted like a lemon honey cough drop and it sort of does, but in the absolute best way possible. Highly recommend!

I followed all of the directions to the letter, but as another commenter also noted, my kuchen came out dry. Not sure what I did wrong. I had high hopes since the recipe had so many 5 star reviews, but am disappointed. FWIW, it looked great - from a presentation standpoint, it was a standout.

This cake came out of my oven in 45 minutes, baked to perfection and looking beautiful! Tastes good, too! Perfect instructions! I made it to take for Rosh Hashana, so I was pleased. It tastes as great as it looks.

I could only fit 2 apple’s worth of pieces in my 8/9” cake pan. I would try a larger one the next time in order to increase the apple to dough ratio. The cake got lots of positive reception for attractiveness but the taste was so-so. However, I left out the candied ginger so maybe that was the fatal flaw.

Just pulled this out of the oven after 65 minutes. I don't have a lot of confidence - didn't seem to want to set up or brown and it doesn't appear to be pulling away from the sides of the pan as I would expect. We'll see...

Favorite dessert at the AFS tasting event. Moist and very gingery. I only needed 2 large Granny Smith apples and extra baking time. Glad I froze a second one for Thanksgiving