Spiced Apple Traybake Slices
A dense apple-and-cinnamon sheet cake, baked at home and cut into flat bars that survive a pack.
- calories
- 320
- weight
- 2.8 oz
- cal / oz
- 114
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 20 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- Dessert
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Day hike
- Car camping
- Bikepacking
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Unsalted butter | 1 cup (225 g) | softened, plus a little for the tin |
|---|---|---|
| Light brown soft sugar | 1 cup (200 g) | |
| Eggs | 4 large | |
| Vanilla extract | 1 tsp | |
| Self-raising flour | 2 cups (225 g) | or plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder |
| Ground cinnamon | 2 tsp | |
| Eating apples | 2 medium | firm ones; cored and sliced thin, skin on |
| Demerara sugar | 2 tbsp | for the top |
| Sea salt | a pinch |
Method
- At home: heat the oven to 350F and line a 9x13 inch tin with parchment.
- Beat the butter and brown sugar until pale. Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla.
- Fold in the flour, cinnamon, and salt. Stop as soon as it comes together.
- Spread the batter into the tin. Lay the apple slices in rows across the top, overlapping slightly, and scatter the demerara over them.
- Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the apples have sunk in a little.
- Cool completely in the tin before cutting. Warm cake tears; cold cake cuts clean.
- Cut into 12 bars and wrap. On the trail, unwrap and eat.
This is a home bake carried into the field, not a camp recipe. It earns pack space because the shape is right: a flat, dense bar with no filling, no glaze, and nothing that separates when it gets warm or squashed. Cookies crumble and pastries go to grease. A slab of butter cake with apple in it does neither.
The apples are structural, not decoration. They cook down into the sponge and hold moisture there, so the bars stay chewable on day three instead of going dry and chalky. Cut them cold and wrap them individually, or they fuse into a block and you end up eating handfuls. Butter and eggs mean this is a shoulder-season snack, not a July one.
Packing
Wrap each bar in foil or parchment, then stack the flat side down in a rigid container or along the back panel of the pack. They keep four days in cool weather, two in heat. Bake the day before you leave.
Variations
- Swap half the apple for thin-sliced pear; it holds less moisture, so add five minutes of bake time.
- A quarter cup of raisins folded into the batter adds sugar without changing the structure.
- Grated fresh ginger with the cinnamon if you want the spice sharper.
https://www.baldhiker.com/simple-apple-traybake-recipe-a-sweet-treat