The ridiculously easy, delightfully delicious gluten free apple dump cake does have a terribly unfortunate name. So-called because all you do is “dump” the ingredients into a pan and pop it in the oven, it's the very essence of quick & easy—whether you use my make-your-own gluten free vanilla cake mix recipe or an actual off-the-shelf boxed gluten free vanilla cake mix.
Since it's apple season, we'll pile in the chopped apples and add plenty of cinnamon and nutmeg. That's pretty much all it takes to make your house smell like an autumn dream come true!
The method for making this gorgeous, simple cake is just a little bit different than, say, my blueberry dump cake.
Here, we have to make sure that the chopped apples are perfectly tender, but without turning to mush. The secret's in raising the oven temperature a bit to 350°F, tossing the fruit with a bit of the cake mix, and covering the baking dish tightly with aluminum foil for the first half hour of baking time. That allows the apples plenty of time and steam to cook perfectly, and the bit of flour helps keep the apples from releasing too much thin liquid that is more likely to burn. It works!
The only part that might take you a few minutes of prep (but no more than 10 minutes—really!) is peeling, coring and chopping the apples. I like to use a simple apple corer (aff. link) to remove the cores first, then a basic vegetable peeler (aff. link) to remove the peel. Then a rough chop of the apples, and you're ready to go. Start with large apples if you can, since they're easy to core and peel.
You can even prepare the cake ahead of time, cover with plastic wrap and store it, unbaked, in the refrigerator for up to 2 days before baking. The apples will turn brown, but it doesn't matter one bit as we'll expect them to brown in the oven.