Tasty Tuesdays - Spiced Apple Cake (Home-cooking)

Silly question but do you like cake? I’m three months into this blog thing now and I think it’s time we celebrated with some beautifully moist and fruity spiced apple cake, courtesy of my mum’s cookbook. You can have it for afternoon tea, dessert, or even with your evening hot chocolate. It’s that good, one slice just won’t be enough!

The key to perfection with this recipe is your apples. You’ll need two different types: cooking apples (Bramley, preferably, as these pulp down well when stewed) and eating apples (I’d recommend Gala or Pink Lady as you’ll want them to be juicy and flavourful). These are incorporated into the cake in three ways:

• Purée: peel and dice your cooking apple and allow it to stew down in a lidded pan over a low heat with a little added water, stirring frequently to prevent it sticking to the bottom. You will only need 6-12 dessertspoons of this to add to your cake batter (depending on how big you want your cake to be) so opt for an average sized apple.
• Grated: peel and grate your eating apple and add this to the batter too
• Sliced: leave about a quarter of your eating apple ungrated and slice it very thinly. This will be layered with the batter.

You also need to be generous with your spices. My mum’s recipe only called for ½ a teaspoon each of cinnamon and allspice, but I chose to double that because it is a spiced apple cake after all. And this can be increased to 2 teaspoons if you’re making a larger cake. The smaller recipe yields roughly 6 generous or 8 thinner slices, while I’d imagine the larger cake could manage between 10 and 14 slices – but you can bet that whatever the size, as you can see, it will be a highly photogenic cake!

I will provide measurements in bold for the larger cake and italics for the smaller cake.

SPICED APPLE CAKE (6-14 slices) 

• 4oz/112g / 2oz/55g light brown/Muscovado sugar
• 8oz/224g / 4oz/112g butter (room temperature)
• 8oz/224g / 5oz/140g self-raising flour
• 4 / 2-3 eggs (depending on size)
• 2tsp / 1tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 2tsp / 1tsp cinnamon
• 2tsp / 1 tsp allspice
• 4oz/120g (12dsp) / 2oz/60g (6dsp) cooking apple purée
• 1 standard eating apple, peeled and quartered
• A sprinkling of demerara sugar

1. Preheat your oven to 190°C/375°F, and grease and line an 8”/20cm round cake tin with greaseproof baking paper (preferably springform or one with a loose bottom)
2. Cream together the butter and light brown sugar (you can do this with an electric whisk, or by hand with a wooden spoon if you like)
3. Add the flour, baking powder, eggs, apple purée, and spices, and whisk until well blended (this part is best done with the electric whisk)
4. Grate ¾ of the eating apple into the cake mix and blend well
5. Pour half the mixture into your prepared tin, slice the remaining ¼ apple thinly and layer it over, before pouring the rest of the cake mix on top and smoothing it
6. Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top with a little extra cinnamon
7. Cook in the preheated oven for an hour or until the top has turned a beautiful golden brown and a knife comes out cleanly when inserted into the centre

Serve with tea, ice cream, whipped cream or just as it is.