#applecake

Apple Cake

Cakes

Hey Joe

The education system is not designed to turn out thoughtful individualists, it is there to get us to work. When we come home exhausted from the inanities of our jobs we can relax in front of the inanities of the TV screen. This pattern, punctuated by birth, death and marriage and a new car, is offered to us as real life. – Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects, 1996, 135

The book you left for me on my desk, Chen Chen’s when I grow up I want to be a list of further possibilities, features a flying mango. I’m seeing a mango with white wings like sugar biscuits tipped in sparkly gold. I want to be as fearless and fabulous as a flying mango with wings.

I had big plans. Lying on a yoga mat in a position that wasn’t completely uncomfortable, I’d decided I was going to create an apple cake trilogy which I had to start working on before I knew what an apple cake trilogy was, how I would make it, and who I was making it for. I left the house to collect some apples from the field down the road and baked an apple cake that evening as a first test of many. The plan, although not yet fixed, was to present you with an apple cake a week over the period of a month. A collection of cakes to plot through this phase, as more apples fell off trees.

While I was working on the apple trilogy, a woman named Morine down the road put a local call out. Her trees were dropping more fruit than she could use. She welcomed me into her kitchen which was a sea of apples, the floor, the dining table, and every counter covered. As I was filling up a bag full, I spied an apple cake in the corner of the kitchen. A beautiful, tall one, with a big chunk taken out of it. I asked if she had a good apple cake recipe. The two of us, looking through a large ring-bound folder of cake recipes from magazine and newspaper cuttings stashed in plastic Polly pockets, found not one, but exactly three apple cake recipes, each with recommendations scribbled in the margins. There was my apple cake trilogy, not quite in the form I’d thought, but there it was.

Something about apples and flying fruit has me thinking. Last June, I wrote this apple cake recipe after an image of an apple that had just been lobbed through a battlefield stuck in my mind. (I was the apple). The apple obviously didn’t have wings, because it was just an apple, so, its journey wasn’t going to end well.

So, that apple that was hurtling through a battlefield, landed. And now, a mango with white wings like sugar biscuits tipped in sparkly gold.

Here is the apple cake recipe made with Morine’s apples firmly connected to a solid, still, heavy, cold ground. My ultimate crowd-pleasing apple cake, the best of a lot of tests, and the favourite of a lot of testers. This cake has as many apples as is possible to pack into a cake, a syrup top, and a buttery cinnamon interior. It keeps really well too.

You Have Options – This cake can be enjoyed perfectly as is or jazzed up by swapping the cinnamon for caraway seeds or almond extract or adding a crumble top. If you don’t have golden syrup and lemon on hand, use honey or apricot jam to finish the cake, or leave all that and dust with lots of icing sugar once cooled.

Ingredients

  • 300g apples, peeled, cored and each chopped into large chunks + 1 apple to top the cake – cooking apples, braeburns, bramleys or russetts all work
  • 100g butter, softened
  • 150g sugar
  • 1tp cinnamon
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 20g ground almonds
  • 150g plain flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • Juice of half a large lemon
  • 30g golden syrup

Method

Preaheat the oven to 180 / 165 fan. Grease a 2lb / 900g loaf tin and line with greaseproof paper.

Prep the 300g apples and set them aside. In a large bowl cream together the butter, sugar and cinnamon. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until fully incorporated before adding the next. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the almonds, flour, salt, baking powder and apples to the bowl and fold everything together until a batter is formed.

Scrape the batter into the tin and bake for 20 mins. While the cake is in the oven peel, core, and thinly slice the apple to top the cake. When the 20 mins is up, pull the cake from the oven and carefully place the apple slices over the top, the quicker you are the better to avoid the cake sinking. Bake the cake for a further 25 mins or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs.

Mix together the lemon juice and golden syrup, and brush over the hot cake while it’s still in the tin.

Enjoy le cake! xox Caitlin

Sugared Green Apple Thyme Cake

Cakes

Yo Joe

I’ve been thinking of this scene from the Matrix for the last two weeks. I’ve dreamt about it, thought about it in the shower, eating dinner, running. Had a lot of conversations about it too. With Emma having a coffee, Coco in a sauna and Máté on a park bench. The scene is lodged in my head.

Imagine it for a second. No longer than a second though, mum told me this was the film that gave you 5 years of nightmares when we were kids. So, for a second only, think of the bit where the main man with the sunglasses is on a roof, dodging bullets. Who, or what, is firing the bullets – your guess is as good as any, but they’re coming from every angle. Main Matrix man’s reflexes, and the bullets, are moving at lightning speed, in deep, breathy slow motion.

Someone ran out of bullets. Only one thing for it… to lob their afternoon snack at main Matrix man. The crunchiest, juiciest, just-plucked-from-the-tree, green apple. Cutting through the air, the green globe is spinning slowly on its axis headed to hit our main man dead centre in the forehead. He knows it. I know it. You know it. The apple, poor sod, doesn’t know it. The apple is just catapulting through the air, fast in a direction that it’s unsure of only so far as it hasn’t chosen it. But holy moly, this tasty morsel is moving with impressive conviction.

Time is slowed to an 8th of its normal pace; a thicker wave of bullets now, like a fleet of mini submarines (llolll what an effective use of a simile). But Matrix man is fixated on the green apple globe about to bonk him. A bullet impact would be far more painful, but nothing comes close to the fixation, fear and… bewilderment at something as out of place as a green apple flying through a battle field. With a sharp backwards back bend and a chin tuck, Matrix man dodges, only just clearing a path for the apple to drive through.

That’s where it ends, the scene that’s been playing in my head. I never see what happens to the apple. I only see its impressive globe greenness, and its shininess, and the sheer speed of it hurtling through the air in slow motion. The apple might be a bit baffled by the speed of the situation, only, its rapid movement forward doesn’t allow for it. The only way I can comprehend the apple’s feeling is the way the scene is distilled, neatly, but disorientingly, in mega pixel slow motion (lol what’s that?).

I have to confess, I’ve never watched the Matrix. And I’ve come to find, that scene doesn’t exist. I realise it would’ve been impressive to have a memory of a scene in mind from a film I’d never watched, but I was pretty convinced. Ever since I handed in my dissertation and finished my degree, there popped up that green apple Matrix scene. I’ve been describing it to everyone. Emma told me it made her think of Magritte’s The Son Of Man and it got me and Máté googling ‘what does you are the apple of my eye mean?’

When I realise half way through narrating this scene that the listener has watched the Matrix, I cut to the chase, tell them that I feel like that green apple. A bit lost in air and space, no ground at my feet, moving slow, a bit adrift, but hurtling so surly in a direction that I can’t comprehend, through a world that’s too quick for its own good.

Thyme gives this cake a lemony savoriness that’s initially surprising, and then addictive. It creeps up on you, and then demands to be craved. Cream cheese gives a crumb that’s soft and buttery, that holds integrity. Sugared chunks of green apple add layers of sweet and sour in equal measure that sing a lil bit when hit against the thymey cakey base(y – haha). Like I said, arresting, and then, it melts together in comforting, thrilling ways.

A Note On Thyme. You need fresh thyme leaves for this cake, so you’ll need to hand pluck them from the stalks. Yup, it takes time, but it makes a good thing in the end. I’m heavy handed with my spices and herbs, I’m not one for their subtle use. If you prefer a less punchy herb or spice experience, go for 1 and a half teaspoons.    

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 – 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, amount to taste
  • 160g green apple, aprox. 2 small apples peeled cored and cubed
  • 120g unsalted butter, softened
  • 170g caster sugar, plus a tablespoon extra to finish the cake before the oven
  • Zest of an orange
  • 2 large eggs
  • 100g cream cheese
  • 130g plain flour
  • 40g ground almonds
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180 / 160 fan oven. Grease and line a 22cm / 8inch round cake tin.

Peel, core and cube the apples. Don’t worry too much about getting exactly 160g. Just keep in mind, if you go a lot over that weight, the cake will take longer to bake, resulting in a tough cake texture. Strip the thyme leaves off the stalks and give the leaves a rough chop. Set both aside while you make the cake batter.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and orange zest until fluffed up, about 1 min. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until fully incorporated between each addition.

To the bowl, add the thyme leaves, cream cheese, flour, ground almonds and baking powder. Give everything a gentle mix until just incorporated, being careful not to overmix the batter. You should end up with a soft but thick-ish batter. Smooth it out into the cake tin, scatter over the cubed apple and the tablespoon of sugar.

Bake for 50-55 mins, until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean but with a few moist crumbs still attached. The cake will keep covered for 4 days, but this one is best eaten on the day or the day after.

Till next thyme, Caitlin x