Russian* Apple Pie (or when desserts go wrong)

The Idea: I will not dwell much on this recipe or the result, but some times good intentions do not result in good outcomes. For our semi-regular "Ethnic" night, my family made Russian fare and while it was a great opportunity to make a recipe I found for "Russian Torte**" online, the 1350 calories per serving turned me off and I settled on something different- a simple, 4 ingredient dessert that had positive reviews.

The Recipe:
Russian Apple Pie on Food.com

Alterations:
No Granny Smith Apples available (unless I want to go to a high priced import shop) so the cheaply available Polish apples went in this version. No chance on blaming the apples for the negative result. I did sprinkle a bit of baking powder in the batter because I had my doubts as soon as I realized what was going into the batter that my result was going to basically be a thick pancake with apples in it. It reminded me of the times way back when when my sister and I used to have recipe free bake-offs which 9 times out of 10 resulted in thick, oven cooked pancakes since we were pretty clueless about what actually should go into cake batter... but back to this flop of a desert. At least I had some assistance from my trusty sous chef:
Lessons Learned:

• I should have known better.
  


• Stick to tortes.
  


• In all fairness this was ok sprinkled with powdered sugar as a afternoon snack for kids. The recipe only has 1/2c sugar in the whole thing, so at least it is not too sweet. Or sweet at all.

What's Next:

My next post will be about an excellent light torte for a BBQ the next day, but I will keep the calorie laden Russian Torte Recipe in mind for future use. When I need to stock up on calories for a long winter or something.

*I cannot vouch for the authenticity of these recipes, so I hold no one accountable for this sad excuse for a "desert." :)

**I will be trying that one later, despite calorie count because I am well aware that is probably the average calorie count for a good sized piece of torte! I am not ignorant about where the cups of sugar and 100s of grams of butter go to...