Applesauce Coffee Cake

For the toasted pecans:
(Note: You’ll need 1 1/2 cups of chopped pecans. I toasted some extra to make sure that I had a full 1 1/2 cups for the recipe).
1. Preheat oven to 200 F.
2. Lay pecans out on a cookie sheet.
3. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.
4. Remove them from the oven, let them cool then chop them up.

For the applesauce:
1. Put the chopped up apples in a large pot.
2. Add cinnamon stick, cinnamon, ground ginger, water, sugar and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium heat.
3. Once at a boil, reduce temperature to medium low.
4. Cook for about 20 minutes until all the apples are tender and mushy. Remove from heat and set aside. You can mash the apples down more if you like, but I prefer to leave yummy apple chunks.

For the crumb topping:
1. Stir together butter, dark brown sugar, oats, cinnamon and salt until crumbly.
2. Stir in 1/2 cup of the chopped toasted pecans. Set aside.

For the cake:
1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Coat a 10-inch angel food cake pan with butter or cooking spray; set aside.
3. Sift flour, baking soda, nutmeg, cloves, ground ginger, cinnamon and salt into a medium sized bowl; set aside.
5. Put butter, granulated sugar, and light brown sugar in a bowl and mix until smooth. Mix in the eggs, one at a time. Mix in 2 heaping cups of the applesauce and then mix in the flour mixture. Stir in the remaining 1 cup of chopped toasted pecans.
6. Pour batter into the oiled pan and then sprinkle reserved crumb topping over the top of the batter. Lay the apple slices on top, tucking some into the batter.
7. Bake until a cake tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack.

Adapted from Martha Stewart.