#appleseason

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

Apple Crumble Pie

Uncategorized

Yo Joe,

I was chatting to Chloe the other day (Fwambwy, I have to call you Chloe in this post so all of our many many many readers don’t get confused). I asked her if she liked apple pie. She said yes. This is why I’m writing up this pie I made the other day, so that she might make it and use up her apples.

Kanhai pretending that he made MY pie

I can’t compete with mums apple crumble but I think my apple crumble pie is very, very good. Kanhai liked it too, I think if he could, he would eat ANY variation of apple crumble for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Lil note on the crumble topping – I NEVER measure out ingredients for crumble. Its sugar, flour and butter, I really don’t think there’s much that can go wrong. I have written down measurements for the topping though, just so that the method wouldn’t say ‘make crumble’ as the only instruction.

Both the pastry and the crumble topping can be made in advance, you don’t have to make it all in one go.

Jess doing her job, casually picking up some pie but Sue…Sue has her own artistic vision for the shot.

Ingredients

For the flaky pastry, makes one 23cm tart shell

  • 450g plain flour
  • 300g unsalted butter, cold
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 150ml cold water

For the crumble topping

  • 125g plain flour
  • 75g sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 125g unsalted butter, cold

For the apple filling

  • 910g apples, peeled, cored and chopped into chunky pieces
  • 2 tablespoons plain flour
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Method

Start by making the pastry. The aim is to mix/handle/work the pastry as little as possible. Clumps of butter visible in the dough and some loose bits of dry floury pastry at this stage this is a good thing. Don’t be tempted to work this into a smooth ball of dough.

In a bowl toss together the flour, salt and cubed butter. Once the butter cubes are coated in flour, gently squash them between fingertips. Keep doing this, picking up clumps of butter and flour and ‘squashing’ them together, until the mixture begins to form big clumps and some of the butter is still in pea sized balls. Add in the water and mix with a fork until the mixture forms a large shaggy mass. Wrap the ball of dough in cling film and put in the fridge for at least an hour (can be over night).

When the pastry has chilled, grease a 23cm tart tin or shallow cake tin (a bit smaller or bigger is all good) with butter. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface, to about one cm thick. Roll the pastry onto the rolling pin, picking it up off the surface and roll out over the tart tin. Gently press the pastry to mould to the tin, any breaks, patch them up with a bit of the pastry dough that hangs over the edge of the tin. Don’t trim the pastry that hangs over the edge, do that when it’s out the oven. Put the lined tart tin in the fridge until ready to fill.

For the crumble topping. Mix the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the cold butter in cubes. Gently rub the mixture together between fingertips. Keep doing this until the mixture looks like rough breadcrumbs, with some smaller clumps. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge until you’re ready to use it (it can be kept, covered in the fridge, for up to 5 days).

This is what my hands do when they make crumble
This is what crumble looks like

Pre heat the oven to 180 before prepping the apple filling.

Mix together all the ingredients for the apple filling – the apple filling is now made! Taking the crumble and lined tart tin out the fridge, tip the apples onto the pastry base, and top with the crumble. A bit of the mound of apple crumble in the centre always looks good. Put the pie in the fridge for a final 15 mins before baking.

Put the pie on a baking tray and bake for 1 hour, or until the top is golden brown and the apple is bubbling underneath. Once cooled use a knife to trim any excess pasty that hangs over the rim of the tart/cake tin. The pie is easier to cut when it has cooled for an hour ish but you don’t have to wait…

Get the pie!

Have a good pie. (love you fwambwy) Caitlin xxx