Caramel Apple Dump Cake

5 Reasons You’ll Love This Caramel Apple Dump Cake:

1. Melt-in-your-mouth Delicious: Each bite is filled with the comforting warmth and sweetness of apples and caramel.
2. Fluffy Vanilla Cake Topping: The soft, fluffy vanilla cake complements the gooey caramel and apples.
3. Easy to Make: This simple recipe requires minimal effort, less than 10 ingredients, and no mixing!
4. Versatile: Enjoy it on its own, with a scoop of ice cream, or topped with whipped cream or additional caramel sauce.
5. Perfect for Fall: A seasonal treat that’s ideal for cozy nights and gatherings.

Caramel Apple Dump Cake Ingredients

You need just a few basic ingredients for this super simple dessert!

• Apples: During testing, we found that the best apple to use for this recipe are granny smiths. We found other baking apples to be too sweet for this recipe!
• Sugar: You’ll need both brown sugar and granulated sugar. The brown sugar is what gives this recipe it’s “caramel” flavor, the granulated sugar adds sweetness (and moisture!) to the cake.
• Flour: To keep things simple, you only need all-purpose flour.
• Baking Powder: Provides just the right amount amount of lift to the cake, creating a light and airy texture.
• Vanilla Powder: To keep things as close to traditional as we can, we used vanilla powder to give the cake some flavor without adding any liquid ingredients. If you don’t have vanilla powder, just add some vanilla to the apples!
• Salt: Cuts some of the sweetness.
• Butter: As the butter melts on top of the dry ingredients, that’s what creates the cake layer!

Can I Use Other Fruits?

Apples don’t have a lot of substitution options…but luckily, with this recipe, a delicious (and easy!) substitution would be pears. I personally love the combo of caramel and pears! Our caramelized pear quick bread has to be one of my favorite recipes on the site.

Just keep in mind that if you do this swap, the dump cake may be a bit sweeter than it traditionally would with the granny smith apples. Why? Well, the base to this dump cake is just a simple combination of apples and brown sugar. The granny smith apples are tart, which contrasts the sweet caramelized sugar as it bakes, A different type apple or a pear are sweeter, which means the fruit base will also be sweeter.

If it’s summertime, you could even make this recipe with fresh peaches! It would be similar to our peach cobbler crisp, but SO much easier.

What’s The Best Pan Size To Use?

This recipe was written to fit a 12 inch cast iron skillet. Though, you definitely have options when it comes to what size pan you use! If you’re looking for the best basic pan to make this recipe, we recommend using a 9×13″ casserole.

You should have an apple layer that’s about 1 – 2 inches thick. Preferably, the apples should be about fill the pan ¾ full. The mixed dry ingredients are just sprinkled over the top, not really adding any extra height to the mixture.

Depending on the pan size that is used, the bake time may differ. Our cake took about 65 minutes to bake through, creating a gorgeous golden brown crust on the cake.

You can always check the doneness of the cake by inserting a thermometer into the thickest part of the cake. The cake should read around 210°F (98°C). Just make sure you’re poking through the cake and not the fruit! If your cake seems done and you want to see if the fruit is baked, use your thermometer or a fork and insert it into a piece of fruit to see if it’s tender.