Salted Bourbon Apple Crumble Coffee Cake.

This Salted Bourbon Apple Crumble Coffee Cake is fall baked up into a sweet little cake, infused with warming autumn spices, bourbon, and swirled with crisp autumn apples. This cake is no fuss, easy to mix up, and SO DELICIOUS! Every bite is layered with sweet cinnamon streusel, apples, and bourbon-vanilla coffee cake crumbs. Finish with a light drizzle of sweet glaze for a cake that no one can turn down…breakfast or dessert.

I’m taking a pause from all the pumpkin recipes to bring back an autumn apple recipe! Once October hits I feel like we can all get sidetracked by baking (and cooking) with so much pumpkin. It’s easy to do, something about baking with pumpkin just feels so quintessentially perfect in October.

But, I’m here to remind us all that it’s still very much apple season. And we can’t forget about baking with fall apples too!

Enter this cake. It’s honestly one of the more delicious recipes I’ve baked up all month.

Here are the details

There are three steps to this cake…the batter, the streusel, and the glaze. The batter is pretty simple but has a few special ingredients: apple butter, apple cider, bourbon, apples, and a bit of sour cream to give the cake a perfect moist crumble.

Simply mix together the wet ingredients, then add in the dry…very simple, nothing fancy.

For the middle of the cake, you’ll need to make a streusel. You’ll also need some Honeycrisp apples. For this cake, I opted out of any creamy cheese, as I wanted the flavors of the apples and bourbon to really shine through.

I swirled the middle of the cake with chopped apples and then added a layer of streusel.

For the very top of the cake, I like to arrange a few apple slices around the cake. Then I finish it off with streusel. It’s so delicious and perfect atop this apple cake.

Now on to that glaze

I don’t love a straight powdered sugar glaze. I find it to be pretty bland, and really, it’s just too sugary for my taste.

With this glaze, I wanted it to be exciting, but not overpowering. I wanted the flavors within the glaze to help highlight the flavors in the cake. Apples pair so well with maple. They help to make this my favorite buttery glaze. The bourbon adds a warmth and richness to the glaze, and the small pinch of salt ties it all together.

Not too strong, not too sweet, but just right. Especially when drizzled over this warm cake.

Insanely delish.

When everything is combined into one cake, you have a truly special fall apple cake. Make it today for something sweet tonight. But don’t forget about it when Thanksgiving rolls around next month as well.

It makes for a great brunch cake too!

We all really loved this. Especially my dad, who highly agreed that the apples really do make this cake.

Looking for other apple fall recipes? Here are a few ideas: 

Apple Cinnamon Rolls with Brown Butter Maple Icing

Baked Apple Cider Doughnuts with Cinnamon Maple Glaze

Chewy Brown Sugar Maple Cookies

Lastly, if you make this Salted Bourbon Apple Crumble Coffee Cake, be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! Above all, I love to hear from you guys and always do my best to respond to each and every comment. And of course, if you do make this recipe, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram! Looking through the photos of recipes you all have made is my favorite!