Yay, I’m here! For a fleeting second I wondered if I was going to make this week’s Newsletter deadline but thankfully the panic is over and all is well. I usually start writing my Newsletter on the previous Sunday but I had a busy week, by the time yesterday came round I was panicking as I still hadn’t decided what to write. There are usually so many subjects whizzing around in my head my fingers are itching to start typing, but this week, zilch, nada and diddly-squat was about all I could come up with. Over-thinking doesn’t work for me, I like to sit down and then just write whatever pops into my head first, but nothing was popping.
After breakfast on Wednesday morning I was putting some pans away on the top shelf in the kitchen when I noticed a very dusty, forlorn looking stack of cake tins piled up in the corner. Taking them down for a wash, a pang of guilt flashed across my mind as I tried to remember the last cakes that occupied the tins of widely varying sizes and age. A couple decorated with Christmas trees, one with particular sentimental value as I remember it from my childhood, one so small I don’t know why I keep it and one I remember buying as a souvenir on a Dorset holiday only to find when I returned home it was made down the road in Norfolk.
“You haven’t made a cake for ages!” Michael suddenly piped up hopefully, looking at the cake tins I was now scrubbing with hot soapy suds in the kitchen sink.
I didn’t reply out loud, but thought to myself “No, I haven’t.” And then “Eureka” there it was, my Newsletter subject was right in front of my face - cake, or lack of it, but cake all the same.
Up until about a year ago I used to make a cake every week, without fail. Friday was ‘cake day’, then my son went off to uni, leaving just Michael and I at home to finish off the cake which was normally accomplished by Saturday - we don’t hang around here when there’s cake involved. It didn’t take long until my jeans were soon bursting at the seams and then my GP told me my cholesterol was too high so the first thing to go was the weekly cake. And at least half the cheese, most of the butter and nearly all of the chocolate, although I do still eat a few squares of the really dark stuff every couple of days.
Maybe I find an empty cake tin such a sorry sight because I remember my Mum’s was always full of delicious homemade treats of one sort or another. Memories of sugary Eccles cakes, rock cakes, English Madeleine castles with cherries on the top, sticky ginger cake and slabs of bread pudding come flooding back, all old-fashioned favourites made from memory.
Two of my most treasured possessions are handwritten recipes from my Mum that I had requested, one for her scrumptious mince pies (I still call them Mum’s mince pies) and one for an indulgent chocolate log, now both seasonal staples in my house at Christmas. Making the same food that she made for her family, especially at such a special time of the year, brings a sense of continuance and comfort. The first mince pies of the season are now always eaten accompanied by a glass of sherry raised in her memory, always with a smile and happy memories of Christmases past.
One of my most cherished food memories from long ago took place on the drive down to a working farm in Devon for our annual family summer holiday. In mid July my brother and I were bundled onto the back seat of the car in our pyjamas, always at some unearthly hour in the morning as Dad insisted on leaving early to miss the traffic. Every year Mum baked a huge apple cake to take with us to eat on the journey, thick wedges washed down with tea from a Thermos flask in a car park somewhere near Exeter. It was delicious; big moist chunks of apple and sultanas in a dense but crumbly sponge topped with a small sprinkling of brown sugar. I remember it so fondly but, silly me, I never thought to ask for the recipe, a big regret even fifty years on from those idyllic days spent crabbing in the rock pools on Putsborough beach, eating tinned ham sandwiches with more sand than ham and not a care in the world.
I have been searching for a similar apple cake recipe for years and have tried several, many really, really good, but never quite the same as my Mum’s or my German Aunty Edith’s, another accomplished apple cake baker whose much loved recipe I didn’t think of asking for either.
Looking back over my old Instagram posts I found quite a few delicious apple recipes from Aprils past. Ed Kimber’s recipe (the cake at the top) is the nearest to my Mum’s as I can find and the Mary Berry recipe is an easy old favourite, good served warm with custard for pudding on those cooler evenings.
For those who prefer a tart to a cake and have time to spare, the Tarte Aux Pommes is worth an hour or two fiddling in the kitchen. Not so much a mid-week cake for the tin, more for a special treat if you feel like making something fancy. Cream with this one I think, not custard.
Recipes below:
Tarte Aux Pommes
(you will need a 9” tart tin)
Sweet Pastry
180g plain flour
90g unsalted butter
2 dessertspoons icing sugar
2 egg yolks
Filling
Approx 1kg cooking apples
180-200g vanilla sugar
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6
Make the pastry in the usual way, adding the sugar with the flour and using the egg yolks instead of water. Chill for 30 minutes then roll out and line the tart tin.
Peel, and roughly chop half the apples. Put in a pan with 120g of the sugar, the vanilla pod and the scraped out seeds, cover and stew gently until soft, almost like a purée. Leave to cool. Add more sugar to taste if required.
When cold, spread into the pastry case. Peel and slice the rest of the apples and arrange in circles on top of the purée. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, sprinkle the top with the remaining sugar (or as much you think fit) and bake for another 20 minutes or until nicely browned. Lovely cold but fantastic hot with cold cream.
Dorset Apple Cake
(you will need a greased and lined deep 20cm cake tin)
115g salted butter from the fridge, diced
225g self raising flour
2 tsp cinnamon
115g light brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
6-8 Tbsp milk
225g Bramley or Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced
100g sultanas
2 Tbsp Demerara sugar
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F
Mix together the flour and cinnamon. Rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix in the sugar. Beat in the egg, then add the milk a little at a time until you have a thick, smooth batter.
Fold in the apples and sultanas, put mixture in the prepared tin and sprinkle with the sugar. Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean from the middle. Leave to cool for 15 minutes before taking out of the tin. Cool further, eat warm with custard or leave to cool completely.
Apple Dessert Cake
(you will need a greased and bottom lined 8” springform or loose bottomed cake tin)
150g melted butter
225g self raising flour
225g caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp baking powder
250g cooking apples, peeled and thickly sliced
25g flaked almonds
Preheat oven to 160°C/ 150°C fan/320°F
Put all the ingredients except the apples and almonds in a mixing bowl. Beat for about a minute until smooth.
Spread half the mixture in the tin and top with the apples, don’t let them touch the edge of the tin if possible. Dollop the rest of the mixture on the top and spread as best you can, don’t worry if it looks messy or there are apples poking through. Sprinkle with the almonds.
Bake for 1 hr 15mins or a little longer if required until golden and slightly coming away from the edge of the tin.
Leave to cool or eat warm with custard.
There are hundreds of apple cake recipes out there and I am not giving up on my search for the absolutely perfect one, so if you have a scrumptious recipe (and it’s not a secret) send it over and I’ll give it a try!
After writing this I feel compelled to fill up at least one lonely cake tin for the weekend. I might whizz up some quick muffins as there are some raspberries in the freezer that need eating or maybe I’ll treat Michael to his first choice always, a good old Victoria sponge with raspberry jam and fresh cream. Sometimes it’s very hard to beat the simple old favourites, have you got a go-to bake that everyone loves?
Well, that’s me for another week lovely people. Thank you for subscribing each and every one of you, thank you for reading my little Newsletter and thank you for the much appreciated very kind comments on here and on Instagram about the recent Food Reminiscences Podcast too.
Have a great week - happy cooking, creating, gardening or whatever you have planned.
Lots of love,
Lindsey x
Oooh I adore Apple cakes. It's so wonderful you were able to keep your Mum's handwritten recipes, treasured to be sure. :)
Exquisite photos. And the cakes look amazing. Thank you