Take 'A Baker's Tour'

Award-winning author Nick Malgieri's latest cookbook combines his two favorite things: travel and baking. "A Baker's Tour," features recipes he has collected during his travels abroad. You will find recipes from Argentina to Japan in this book.

For those not familiar with the baking ingredients, Malgieri has created a great reference guide as well as a list of tools he thinks people should know about before baking any of these recipes.

Friday he visits The Early Show to prepare his Dutch Apple Cake. The following is his recipe. Click here to get more recipes.

Apple Cake (Appelgebak)

Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar plus 2 tablespoons sugar for sprinkling on the apples
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
3 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, quartered, and cored

Glaze:
1/2 cup apricot preserves
2 tablespoons water
One 10-inch round pan, 2 inches deep, buttered and lined with a disk of buttered parchment

One 10-inch cake, about 12 servings

1. Set a rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.
2. Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and set aside.
3. Place the butter and 3/4 cup sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat with the paddle on medium speed until soft and light, about 3 to 4 minutes.
4. Beat in 1 egg until smooth. Beat in the vanilla and lemon zest.
5. Beat in about a third of the flour mixture until smooth, and then beat in another egg.
6. Beat in another third of the flour mixture and then beat in the remaining egg.
7. Stop and scrape the bowl and paddle, and then beat in the remaining flour mixture.
8. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Arrange 11 of the apple quarters, core side down, on the batter in a circle near the edges of the pan. Place the last apple quarter in the center of the batter. Sprinkle the apples with the 2 tablespoons sugar.
9. Bake the cake until the apples have softened, about one hour. The batter will definitely be baked through in this amount of time.
10. Cool the cake on a rack in the pan, then unmold it onto another rack and lift away the first rack and replace it with a platter. Invert the cake again and lift off the top rack.
11. For the apricot glaze, stir the preserves and water together in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the glaze comes to a simmer. Strain the glaze into another pan and place it back on the heat. Allow the glaze to reduce until it is slightly sticky and no longer watery, about 2 minutes.
12. Immediately paint the hot glaze onto the apple quarters, using a brush. Let the glaze cool and set before serving the cake.

Storage: Keep the cake under a dome or loosely covered with plastic wrap at room temperature. For longer storage, wrap and refrigerate the cake before applying the glaze. Bring the cake to room temperature and paint the apples with the glaze before serving.