Apple Cake

Apple Cake

This is a favourite in our household and helps to get a bit of extra fruit into my children.

First butter is melted into a mixture of brown sugar and syrup.

 

It is best to keep stirring until they have come together to form a smooth mixture – if the butter is separated from the sugar and syrup keep stirring!

 

Next add some grated cooking apple and some eggs.

 

And then add some self-raising flour, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon.

 

Mixing together to form a fairly runny batter.

 

Pour this batter into lined loaf tins.

 

Bake at 150C for about 90 minutes or until cooked through.  These could have done with a few minutes longer as they were still a bit stodgy at the bottom but I had to get them out of the oven to go to work….

 

Blackberry and Apple Cake

 

There are still lots of blackberries on the bushes and when I go for a walk I feel as if I have to pick them – it would be wasteful not to!  So going for a walk yesterday resulted in me making this blackberry and apple cake.  It is based on a recipe from the BBC Good Food site.

First I rubbed some butter into some plain flour and then added some light brown muscovado sugar.

 

I then put a little of this mixture to one side to use for a crumble topping adding some cinnamon and demerera sugar.  To the main bulk of the mixture I added some baking powder.

I then grated some apple and mixed it with egg and orange zest.

 

The egg and apple is then folded gently into the flour mixture to make a soft dough.

At this point most of the blackberries were added.

 

However, to prevent them sinking to the bottom of the cake I tossed them in a little flour first.

 

I then gently folded them in to the cake batter and put the batter in a lined 2lb loaf tin.

 

The remaining blackberries were sprinkled on the top of the cake.

 

Followed by the crumble topping.

 

The cake was then baked in a cool oven for about 1 1/4 hours until it was golden and cooked through.

 

This recipe is also lovely made with raspberries, apple and lemon or blueberries, pears and orange.