Grandma's Streusel Applecake

Nothing like a sweet treat on the weekend, after a full week of hard work.
I love the smell of baked apples and vanilla.
Real vanilla bean is just awesome! I have not bought vanilla extract in years, instead I have been using vanilla sugar or vanilla bean instead. Vanilla sugar is super easy to make, instead of discarding the scraped out beans, I cover them in sugar and store it in a glass jar. The sugar will take the aroma from the vanilla bean. Stir or shake once a week. Try this in your cake recipes or even in your coffee.Yumm!

Grandma's Streusel Apple cake:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbs. vanilla sugar
2 eggs
about 1 tsp. lemon juice
1 pinch salt
1 cup flour
1/3 cup cornstarch
4 tbs. milk
2 tsp. baking powder

4 medium sized apples, peeled, cored and cut in slices

streusel:
2/3 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbs. vanilla sugar
about 6 tbs. butter, cold

 Cream together the sugar, vanilla sugar and the softened butter. Add the eggs, one at the time, stirring until they are all worked in. Add the lemon juice. Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking powder.
Add this and also the milk to the egg, butter mixture and stir until it's a smooth dough.
Grease a Spring form pan and pour the dough in, smoothing it out with the back of a wet spoon.

Place the apples on top of the dough, leaving a small rim on the outside with no apples.( the dough will rise and make a nice crust ).

For the streusel, mix together the flour, sugar and vanilla sugar. Dot with the cold butter and work  it in, either with a fork or use your hands, to make streusel.

Top the apples with the streusel and bake in a 375 - 400 F preheated oven for about 45 minutes. 

Dust with powdered sugar when cooled.