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  Sorry, coffee and walnut cake, you've just been superceded!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

Sweetbird Smoothies : another product review!

There’s going to be a little rush on product reviews, as the lovely people at Beyond the Bean sent us a job lot to try out!

The next yummy thing we sampled, were the new Smoothies from Sweetbird.

Unlike a lot of Smoothies out there, Sweetbird make theirs completely from fruit, the whole fruit and nothing but the fruit.  There is no dairy involvement at all, which is nice if you’re dairy intolerant and also nice because it results in a gorgeously tangy smoothie.  Of course, it would also mean they are attractive to vegetarians and vegans alike.

I prefer to drink my smoothies at breakfast time, my son would have had a smoothie at any old time of day, but wound up using them as an after-school snack, which is something of which I approved wholeheartedly.  Seemed to me to be a great improvement on a packet of crisps.  Hubby, unfortunately, couldn’t cope with the sharpness and after a magnificent bout of face pulling, opted out of this taste testing.  So, from that, I’d say it’s probably best to just try one and see what you think!

By far and away the favourite of the bunch, for me, was the Blackcurrant and Apple.  I was intrigued to note the inclusion of Black Carrot juice and felt it would have been good to have included a black carrot in the fruit that was grouped together for the packaging pictures (which seemed a little bit dull, to me).  After all, there can’t be that many things that include Black carrot juice!

Son’s favourite was the Orange and Mango version (which isn’t surprising, considering the other version was a Pineapple and Passionfruit one – and we’ve already discovered he’s not that keen on Passionfruit!).  In truth, I’d have been as happy with one as with the other, as you could almost feel them doing you good as they went down.

At £1.79 per bottle, they aren’t the cheapest things in the world – especially when you’re counting the pennies.  However, if you have problems getting fruit into your children, or don’t enjoy chomping your way through several items of fruit in a day, then these little lovelies are your answer.  Of course, if money is no object, then I’d have one with breakfast every day, as I think they are a great way to wake up your tastebuds!

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Non-Rissoles, yummy Devilled Chicken & new Sausage & Mozzarella Pasta Bake photo!

You might remember from my overview of the week's menus, that we were going to endeavour a trip back in time by way of the Rissole.  Well, it didn't happen.  That's not to say we didn't TRY to make it happen - it just appeared to be doomed from the start and definitely didn't get any better as time went by.

It was a Delia Smith recipe, so we had confidence in that most of Delia's recipes work absolutely fine and give perfectly acceptable results.

Pork & Apple
normally works!

Hubby was cooking this one, but its success or failure wasn't anything to do with him, as right from the word go when he combined the first few ingredients, it was looking ropey.  The resultant mush, from which one was supposed to be able to form little patty shapes, ran through his fingers.  Having firmed it up with judicious use of flour, his suspicions were aroused and so he pan-fried some of the mixture as a test.  The flavours just didn't work.  The pork was overwhelmed by both the apple and the mace, plus the apple had made the mix far too wet.

However, he persevered and gave it the benefit of the doubt.  You see the cooking was long and slow oven cooking, covered, and so we thought that perhaps the flavours would meld better in the cooking.  Certainly the sharpness of the apple had mellowed somewhat, but the pork was indeed completely lost and quite apart from anything else, they had welded themselves to the roasting tin.  We got a pack of sausages out of the freezer and the rissole mix went into the bin.  Irritating, when it involved £2-worth of pork mince and a cooking apple, not to mention the energy it took to make and cook them.

However, it would be amazing if one didn't experience a flop every now and then!

The Devilled Chicken recipe was markedly more successful - although I don't have a photograph to prove the issue, as I hadn't realised that the memory card wasn't in the camera when I took the photographs!  However, I'm quite sure that it won't be long before we re-visit this recipe and I'll update with photographs and blog the recipe then.

Here's a new photograph of a family favourite, our Sausage & Mozzarella Bake.  This one shows the underside of the lovely gooey Mozzarella, where the pasta, broccoli and sausage hide.  With the lovely rich tomato & chilli sauce, it is just the job for these chilly winter evenings.

Quince, Carrot & Apple Muffins

On the way to work the other day, I was sat at traffic lights when I was aware that there, in the hedge to a piece of common land, were several small golden globes.  I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was, in all probability, looking at a quince bush.  There was a slight possibility that they were apples, but either way they required further inspection.  So, when I left for home, I had a quick peep and sure enough they were quince.  It didn't take very long at all for me to pick them and pop them into a bag (I always carry a plastic bag, just in case of foraging bounty!) and away home they came.

I still had half of Laura's quinces in the freezer, so what to do with these?  I had found all kinds of savoury uses for quince, but wanted to explore using them in a sweet context.  They are quite tongue-curlingly sour, so my mind began to travel down the lemon route.  After all, lemons are equally sour yet we use them in lemon tarts, lemon drizzle cakes - all kinds of sweet contexts.

I had a recipe for lemon drizzle muffins, which fitted with the ingredients I had to hand.  However, I felt that the quince on their own might not have enough "oomph" to stand up to the relatively rough handling that a muffin mix receives, although there would certainly be enough sugar involved.  So I remembered my recipe for carrot & apple muffins.  Quince goes admirably well with apple, they have a certain similarity in flavour.  Hence, the Quince, Carrot & Apple Muffins were born.

A tip for grating quinces - don't cut them into quarters and try to remove the core (as I began to do), instead just grate them down to the core (which is so hard, it doesn't grate easily by hand anyway), turn and grate again, turn and grate again, until the quince is done.

The muffins are truly delicious, with a light fluffy texture that retains the moistness of the fruit & carrot content and a very definite flavour of quince which lends them a mysterious air.  Perfect with a cup of tea or coffee.

QUINCE, CARROT & APPLE MUFFINS (makes 12 medium sized muffins)

Ingredients :

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch salt
half a cup of raisins, or sultanas, or mixed fruit
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup grated carrot
1 cup grated apple
1 cup grated quince
three quarters of a cup of vegetable oil
3 eggs

Method :

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 180deg/gas mark 4.  Mix all the dry ingredients together, then add the wet fruit and carrot and stir briefly with a fork, to combine.

2.  In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and oil together, then add to the flour/fruit mixture and stir lightly with a fork.  You're not looking for a well-mixed texture, as muffins seem to benefit from the odd lump and bump!

3.  Spoon into muffin cases (silicone versions are great) and bake for 20-25 mins or until a wooden skewer comes out clean.

4.  Try not to eat them all before they've cooled down.

Chestnut Sponge Dessert with Apple & Quince

I say "dessert", to distinguish it from a sponge cake as this is very definitely a "sponge in a dish".

This dessert sponge was something of an experiment.  I had been given a bag full of Quinces from a friend who grew them for the decorative effect in the garden, but not for use in the kitchen.

I have never tangled with Quince before and for all that I’d seen many recipes that involved their use, I hadn’t any great plan for them.  Because of this, I firstly investigated how best to keep them – would Quince freeze, for example.

Having cut them in half and oven-roasted them with a little sugar and water in a covered dish, I was able to squeeze the core and pips out and discard them.  This resulted in a gorgeously aromatic little bowl of extremely tart fruit flesh.

The taste – once you stop wincing from the sourness – is somewhat reminiscent of apple.  I knew I had a cooking apple in the fridge, which was looking for a home.  Cue one Apple & Quince Sponge pudding, with the fruit in a gorgeously tart layer below a sponge made with roasted Chestnut crumbs (we'd foraged the Chestnuts some weeks ago and the roasted crumbs had been in the freezer ever since), which was an absolute treat with some vanilla ice cream.

CHESTNUT SPONGE WITH APPLE & QUINCE  (Serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

3 tbsp Quince pulp

1 Bramley apple, peeled, cored and sliced

2 tbsp honey

1 tbsp granulated sugar

2 tbsp water

a half a cup of sugar

a half a cup of flour

a half a cup of roasted chestnut crumbs

a half a cup of milk

1 tsp baking powder

a quarter teaspoon of salt

Method :

1.  Pre-heat oven at 180deg C. 

2.  Place the sliced apple, quince, honey, sugar and water into the bottom of a small casserole dish and microwave on high for 3 minutes, then stir to combine and set aside.

3.  In another bowl, place the flour, sugar, milk, baking powder, salt and chestnut crumbs and whisk together until they resemble a thickish batter.

4.  Pour over the fruit, then place into the oven for 35-40 minutes.

Serve warm, with vanilla icecream or greek yoghurt.

Boiled Fruit Loaf

I came home from work on Thursday, walked in to the house which was full of the smell of fruit cake.  Ooooh, delicious! The Artisan Bagel Baker had broadened his scope and made a cake.

Now I have to say, that this isn't the first cake hubby has made - he's quite an accomplished baker of cakes.  He makes a lovely ginger cake and his lemon drizzle is legendary.

However, there's just something so autumnal about a fruit cake - and this one goes perfectly with some of the Lake District Cheddar cheese.

BOILED FRUIT LOAF

Ingredients

100g sultanas
100g flame raisins (or dried cherries, or dried cranberries or a.n other dried fruit)
1 eating apple, peeled and grated
250ml semi-skimmed milk
200g light muscovado or other light brown sugar
125g baking margarine or butter
1 beaten egg
250g self raising flour
half a tsp ground cinnamon
half a tsp ground mixed spice.

Method

1.  Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C (fan).

2.  Put the dried fruit, grated apple, milk, sugar, margarine and spices into a large pan and bring to a simmer.  Simmer for 2 mins and then remove from the heat to cool for 15 mins.

3.  Once cooled, fold in the flour and mix well.  Add the egg and then mix again.

4.  Pour into a greased and lined 2lb loaf tin and bake for 1 hour 15 mins (a paper hat may be needed over the loaf tin to prevent the top from overcooking).  Test with a skewer, returning to the oven for another 10 mins if the skewer comes out with batter on it.

5. Once the skewer comes out clean, leave to cool.

NOTE :  this recipe produces a very moist cake, if a drier texture is needed, increase the baking time by 20 mins and make sure a paper hat is used.