• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a large bundt pan.  Baking times differ depending on the type or thickness of your pan.
• Peel apples and slice into small pieces. You will need 4 cups. (For us, we used 2 granny smith and 2 gala). Set aside or later.
• In a bowl separate from your mixing bowl,  add the all purpose flour, ground cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Whisk 30 seconds to blend dry ingredients.  Set aside.
• To the bowl of you mixer add the  1 ½ cups vegetable oil, vanilla extract, white and brown sugar.  Mix to blend. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
• Using a spoon, stir the flour mixture into the egg mixture just until combined.  The batter will be quite thick.
• Fold in the finely chopped apples and  pecans.  Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.
• Bake for 45 minutes, check on the cake using a long wooden skewer or toothpick inserted into the cake. It is done when the tester comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
• Cool the cake in the pan 10 minutes before turnout out.  If desired, spoon or pipe caramel sauce on the top of the cake.

Caramel Glaze

• Using a medium size saucepan (deep enough to prevent boil over) melt the butter over medium heat.Add the brown sugar and the remaining ingredients and heat on medium high heat.
• Stir to blend, try to keep mixture off the sides of the pan. Once the mixture begins to boil, reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 6 minutes, checking often to make sure that it is not going to boil over. It should still be bubbling.
• After 6 minutes, remove from heat.Keep in mind that the caramel with thicken up a bit as it cools. You can pour it into a long glass casserole dish if you want it to cool more quickly. We often refrigerate to cool it off as well.
• Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce. It can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container up to 2 weeks.
• Once the cake and caramel have cooled, you can either spoon the caramel over the cake, or for more control, add to a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away or to a ziplock bag with a bit of the corner snipped away and drizzle onto the cake.
• Top with crushed pecans if you'd like.