Penuche frosting becomes the main character

When it came time to decide the top recipe on our recent list of the 49 best fall bakes, Old-Fashioned Apple Cake wasn't even on our radar. But as we narrowed down our top 10, it felt like the perfect apple recipe was missing. This humble cake is greater than the sum of its parts, and what pushed it past other contenders (including Whipped Apple Caramel Cake and Apple Fritter Cake) to land at the very top of this list was the fudgy, flavorful penuche frosting. 

You may think of penuche as an old timey fudge shop confection, often sliced into squares and studded with nuts, but if you take that template of cooked-down butter, brown sugar, and milk, you have a formula for a deeply flavorful frosting. 

To make penuche frosting, combine melted butter, brown sugar, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat. Then, add milk (and, in the case of our Old-Fashioned Apple Cake, boiled cider for extra flavor), and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and then add sifted confectioner’s sugar to avoid lumps. Instead of letting the hot mixture set completely and turn into fudge, it’s spread on top of cakes while still warm, where it sets into a fudgy, caramelly layer.  

The cooking process nearly turns the sugar into caramel — without the fuss of using a thermometer. It's richer than meringue buttercreams (which are light and silky) and bolder than confectioner sugar frostings (which are often one-note and too sweet).  

Photography by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Sarah Jampel

The toasted brown sugar flavor goes well with plenty of fall-inspired flavors, and you can choose to flavor it with vanilla to keep the pure toasted sugar flavor or add boiled cider for a more apple-forward spin. Or to really amp up the fall flavor, follow recipe developer PJ Hamel’s lead and replace 2 tablespoons of the milk with 1 tablespoon boiled cider and 1 tablespoon bourbon. 

Even though this penuche frosting is paired with apple cake in this recipe, it shouldn’t be exclusively reserved for it. Use it with spiced cakes like this chocolate gingerbread cake or Golden Spice Cake. Or give a nod to penuche in its true fudge form and pair the frosting with a cake studded with nuts like carrot cake or Hummingbird Cake (both of which are also generously spiced). Let the frosting shine against a more neutral backdrop, such as this simple vanilla cake, or play on the toasty flavors of bananas foster in cake form. You can even swap the frosting for the caramel layer in millionaire’s shortbread.  

Apples may be the typical star of fall baking, but penuche steals the show. Make it the main character of your bakes all season long.

Cover photo (Old-Fashioned Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Frosting) by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Sarah Jampel.