It Just Has To Be Delicious

Posts tagged ‘cake’

Apple cake

What could be more delicious with a cup of tea than a freshly baked apple cake. This one is easy once you have everything ready to put in the bowl.

The size of the tin doesn’t matter too much, give or take a few centimetres, but I used a 20cm springform tin and lined it with baking parchment. I have a fan oven so I cooked this at 160 degrees C for 38 minutes, but if you don’t have a fan oven try 175 degrees C for 40 minutes. I always check my baking around 5 to 10 minutes before the cooking time is up and I listen to hear if the mixture is still bubbling. This is quite a gooey cake, so don’t worry that it’s not cooked if it seems a bit soft.

Recipe:

120g Plain flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
A quarter of a teaspoon of Salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
The zest of an orange or mandarin (optional)
110g Butter or dairy free spread
120g sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla
3 tablespoons Dark Rum (if like me you are not drinking alcohol, add a tablespoon of honey instead)
Approx 3 and half cups of chopped apple (peeled, cored, I sliced them and halved the slices)

  1. Line/grease your baking tin of choice (I used a 20cm springform tin).
  2. Switch the oven on 160 deg C fan or 175 deg C non fan
  3. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and zest.
  4. In another bowl (or in a food mixer) place the sugar and butter.
  5. Prepare the apples.
  6. Cream together the sugar and butter (I use a hand held whisk but you can use a food processor). Do this for about 3 minutes.
  7. Add the eggs one at a time and whisk.
  8. Add the vanilla and rum or honey and whisk again, it should look light and fluffy.
  9. Stir in the dry ingredients from the other bowl.
  10. Fold in the apple pieces. All the flour and apples should be incorporated into the mixture.
  11. Carefully transfer to the prepared tin and smooth over the top with a spatula.
  12. Bake for 30 minutes then check. If it’s still a bit wobbly or still sounds like the mixture is bubbling, add another 5 minutes and check again.
  13. When it’s ready it should be golden on top.
  14. Cool, run a knife around the inside of the tin before releasing.
  15. Phone your friends to invite them round for tea. Tell them to hurry as the cake is still warm.
  16. Serve on it’s own or with custard or cream.

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Raspberry and White Chocolate loaf cake

Raspberries and white chocolate make a great combination, and a loaf cake is easy to prepare and slice. This lovely light and slightly gooey cake is a sweet summer treat.
I have suggested a few things to reduce the dairy, but you really can’t remove it completely unless you use dark chocolate instead (which works equally well with raspberries).

loaf cake

If you are going for the reduced dairy version, first make your own buttermilk by adding a tablespoon of lemon juice to three quarters of a cup of your favourite non-dairy milk e.g. almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk. Leave it for ten minutes until it curdles.

Line a loaf tin with baking parchment and set the oven to 180 deg C.

Take a punnet of raspberries (1 cup approx). Wash and pat them dry and dust them lightly with some flour.

Take approx 75g of fine white chocolate and break it into small pieces – they don’t have to be uniform in size, just smallish pieces about the same size as choc chips that you would get in a choc chip cookie.

Put the curdled ‘buttermilk’ in a large mixing bowl and add:
125 ml vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla
Whisk them all together with an electric whisk for a few minutes.

In another bowl combine:
One and a half cups of flour
three quarters of a cup of caster sugar
1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder
Half a teaspoon of salt

Fold the dry ingredients into the whisked wet ingredients.
Fold in the raspberries and white chocolate pieces. Pour the mixture into the lined loaf tin and tap the tin on the kitchen worktop to ensure that the mixture gets into the corners of the tin.
Bake for just longer than an hour until a skewer comes out mostly clean (there will be some gooey choc on the skewer).

loaf 2

Cool the cake by lifting it out of the tin. Once almost cool, melt approx 100g white chocolate in a double boiler (a bowl that fits tightly over a saucepan, with some water in the saucepan will work nicely too. Just make sure that the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl.)
Drizzle the melted chocolate over the top of the cake. Done !

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