One bowl apple cake - moist, cinnamon rich and fantastic

It's been a while since I made a cake.  Well, the last one was for son & heir's birthday back in October - a zebra cake - which I haven't blogged yet.  (But I will!).  This one is nothing like as adventurous as that one, but you know?  I'd say this one was just as successful, if not more so.

I've said before about how recipes that have me dotting about the kitchen, doing one process after another, are no good these days.  Well that goes for baking too.  So you can imagine the attraction of seeing this recipe - one bowl?  Count me in!

Not only is it one bowl, but there's no messing about with whisks other than a hand whisk to blend the eggs in, there's no "mix this with that in one bowl, then that with this in another, oh and you'll need another smaller one for this and maybe to put that on a plate", thus creating a mountain of washing up.  Nope.  One bowl, a set of measuring cups (ones that microwave - for the butter, you know), a chopping board, knife and/or peeler and you're done.  I like that.
 

Hot out of the oven

I found the original recipe on Facebook and consequently, I have no idea who to attribute it to.  However, thank you - whoever you are - for your cake!  I'm not sure what - other than the simplicity of the preparation - it was that attracted me to this cake recipe.   After all, it's really just apples and cinnamon and I could get an apple/cinnamon fix from making an apple crumble.  It just looked like it would be munchy.  Munchy is good.

With a cup of tea?

Having made the cake, I'm absolutely in love with it.  It has a lovely, slightly crunchy, caramelised top (which you could sprinkle some sugar onto, if you're not already scared by the amount of sugar in it, like I was), the cake itself is as light as a feather, the apple is cooked and juicy but not wet - it's perfect.  Perfect to have with a cup of coffee in the morning, at tea time in the afternoon or as a dessert.  Hubby reckons it'd be great with vanilla ice cream and I see his reasoning, however I like it with creme fraiche as the slight tanginess of the creme fraiche is a lovely partner to the sweetness of the cake.

Who am I kidding?  I'd eat this cake at any time of the day and with or without a drink alongside.  I really think it has taken the crown as my very favourite cake.  Sorry, coffee and walnut cake, you've just been superceded!
 

Cooled and ready to cut

Oh and don't think you need lovely fresh apples to make it work, either.  I used two very old and leathery Russets, one ancient Jazz, one sad and decrepit old Braeburn and two new, fresh and lively Braeburns.  Once they're peeled and in the cake, you can't tell the difference.  So, don't waste those wrinkly, sad apples - give them a splendid job to do and make this cake!

Or maybe with coffee - everything goes!

I have made some adaptions from the original recipe, in that I've reduced the sugar slightly (by a quarter of a cup), swapped the vegetable oil for melted butter, stipulated self raising flour and decreased the baking powder by a half teaspoonful to reflect that.  I shouldn't admit it, but I was amazed that the cake came out as well as it has, considering how much alchemy goes into cake baking.  It doesn't normally do to tinker about with recipes, but I definitely got away with it (and for the better, I am sure) in this instance.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a tea plate here and it is embarrassingly empty.  I believe I have some cake somewhere that will do the job nicely ...  

ONE BOWL APPLE CAKE   (serves 8-10)

Ingredients :

2 large eggs
1.5 cups golden caster sugar
2 heaped tsp cinnamon
half a cup of melted salted butter
6 medium crisp apples
2 cups self raising flour
1.5 tsp baking powder.

Directions :

Preheat oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas4.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, cinnamon and melted butter.

Peel and slice the apples and add to mixture in bowl (coating as you go to keep apples from turning brown).

Mix together the baking powder and flour and add to the ingredients in the bowl. Mix quickly but well until all of the flour is absorbed by the wet ingredients.

Pour mixture into a lined 9″ round springform pan. Bake for approximately 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle, comes out clean.

Printable version

Two days into the new week : meal planning w/b 11.10.11

Yes, I know, I should have done this blog post by now.  Oh, but you do nag!  *chuckle*

Don't ask me what I've been doing in the meantime, but I seem to have been sat at the computer without anything useful coming of it, except I have collected quite a few new recipes and ideas for menu planning in future.  I consider this to be a good thing.

This week's meal plan is quite a good'un, I reckon.  It seems to be dominated by bacon in several instances, but three out of seven isn't all bad.

So let's have a look at what I'm planning :

Tues : Pizza for son & heir, Sweet & Sour Pork with rice for us

Wed : Spicy Chicken & Bacon pasties with salad

Thurs : Meatballs and pasta

Fri : Chicken Piccata with mashed potatoes, carrots & broccoli

Sat : Pasta Alla Amatriciana

Sun : Lamb & boulangere potatoes with carrots & garden veg

Mon : Full English Breakfast.

That all sounds really nice, I reckon.  I'm looking forward to all of it!

It's now Thursday as I'm writing this, so we've already had the Sweet & Sour Pork and my goodness what a triumph it was!  Accolades have to be given to the Adora's Box blog which is where the recipe came from.  The next time I make it (and there will be a next time) I shall make sure to include son & heir in, as I'm sure he'd enjoy it.  The flavours are gentle and rounded, not at all rough or acidic as they so often are with sweet and sour recipes.  He particularly hates vinegar-like flavours, and although this recipe contains a tablespoonful of vinegar, you'd be hard pressed to know.

Anyway, it deserves a blog post of its own, so watch out for it!

Last night was the Spicy Chicken & Bacon Pasties and apart from a complete lack of being able to pleat a pasty - my skill at doing so totally deserted me - they were really successful.  This one came from a BBC Good Food "40 Chicken recipes" booklet and you can find the recipe on the BBC Good Food website.

I will be blogging about these separately, too - and will include my recipe for them, as I tinkered about with it quite a lot!

Tonight was to have been Meatballs & Pasta, produced by hubby, but we had one of those "forgetting to take it out of the freezer" moments and so the meatballs are off.  We'll have to stop at Sainsbury's and pick up a bag of salad and some fish in breadcrumbs, I reckon.

Apparently, this is what it will look like!

Tomorrow's recipe, Chicken Piccata, is one from Foodista.  However, the author is anonymous, so I can't give him or her the credit they deserve.  Anyway, it's an interesting recipe where you pan fry the flattened out chicken breasts that have been dunked in seasoned flour with lemon zest.  Then you make a sauce which involves wine, lemon juice and capers.  I'm hugely interested to know how this will turn out, so watch the blog and I'll tell you!

Saturday's Pasta Alla Amatriciana is a bit of an experiment.  I used to have an Amatriciana recipe that son & heir and I really liked, but that didn't agree with hubby and gave him terrible indigestion.  I eventually had to bin that recipe, having tried all ways to make it okay for him to eat, without success.

This one, however, is prepared completely differently and with different ingredients (in some instances) and with no chilli.  Again, I'm intrigued by it.  It comes from Chow.com and is attributed to a Chef called Robert Sietsema.  For all that I can't replicate a lot of his ingredients as they are die-hard Italian, I'll do my best to get good ingredients locally for this and we'll see how I fare!

Sunday sees a repetition of the Lamb & boulangere potatoes that got bounced from last week.  I'm determined to do this recipe as it keeps on making my mouth water!  I'm hoping that some more of the garden vegetables will be ready to use by then.  In fact, looking down the garden from the window here, I can see a Romanescu Cauliflower peeking out the top of some leaves - so we should be okay there!

Now I do think that perhaps we should skip lightly over Monday and not talk about it too much.  *blush*  Why am I so embarrassed?  Well, it's a full English Breakfast for dinner - and I'm supposed to be losing weight!  However, it's a request from son & heir who doesn't often request particular meals - and we'd all been feeling the lack of black pudding in our diets, for ages.  A large part of the meat (bacon & sausage) will be grilled and if I don't have any fried bread and opt for a poached egg instead of fried, I reckon I should be able to get by without doing too much damage!  Ah well, it only happens once in a blue moon.

I also have a conundrum to conjur with, this week.  I have been given a huge bag of apples, which are demanding to be done something creative with.  Having had a long and intense ponder, I'm currently thinking along the lines of an apple cake.  Not so much sponge, as a more robust mix such as the Marmalade cake used.  Also, not sliced apples laid on the top, more chunks of apple throughout the cake - much as you would find cherries in a cherry cake.  Maybe some caramel aspect in there too.  I dunno - I'm still working it out.  However, rest assured that you'll hear about it quick sharp if it works out well - and with rather less speed if it's a complete disaster.

So - lots to look forward to!

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