Rainy days make for emo food photos. This cake just spent the bulk of its afternoon listening to The Cure and shopping Urban Decay eyeliner on the Sephora website.

Seriously though, there’s a lesson to be had in this apple spice cake. Have you even eaten a dessert that tasted great but was just missing… something? Yup, that was probably texture you were missing.

See what’s on top of this cake? Those are oats, toasted to crunchy perfection with a little honey, butter, and salt. Those four ingredients combined make for an AMAZING flavor experience, while also adding much-needed texture to what would normally be a 100% tender cake filled with creamy sour cream buttercream. (Read: delicious, but almost ZERO textural interest.)

The toasty earthiness of the oats also helps play down the whiskey-caramel syrup that’s brushed over each layer, so I added a handful of oats to each layer for added texture and flavor.

Every time I make this cake, people raise an eyebrow at the addition of oats. They don’t consider them a dessert ingredient outside of oatmeal cookies. That’s too bad, because when tossed with butter and honey, then toasted, oats take on a super crispy, crunchy texture that’s missing from the vast majority of the desserts I’m served.

The lesson here? There are two:

1 – ADD TEXTURE TO YOUR CAKES and other desserts!
2 – Think outside the box when it comes to everyday ingredients in your pantry. It doesn’t take much effort to turn something boring into an amazing experience.