Toffee Apple Cake

No one likes it when people moan about how busy they are (because hey, isn’t everyone incredibly busy? It feels like half of the people I know are currently ill from stress induced lurgy) but – real talk – life feels ever so slightly chaotic at the moment. I feel as though I live in a world of deadlines, stress and poor sleep patterns occasionally disrupted by the occasional visit to the pub. I’ve found myself desperately inhaling gigantic portions of spinach in an attempt to keep my iron levels up so I don’t fall asleep underneath my desk. It’s come to the point where I’m actually looking forward to my eight hour flight to New York (#humblebrag) next Tuesday as it will be eight hours where I can read, watch crap TV and drink cheap wine without worrying that I should be somewhere doing something.

I’ve mentioned before that when life gets too much for me to handle, I head to my kitchen to indulge in a bit of displacement-therapy baking. Baking-hell-hath-no-fury like a woman who’s on a deadline and is procrastinating by making a gigantic cake. This was the case in my kitchen last Saturday where I was putting real life at bay by closing the door and attempting to cook with every perishable ingredient I could find. The nice people at Fruitdrop, an office fruit delivery service, had recently sent me a box stuffed full of apples, plums, oranges and bananas. After eating a fair amount of the fruit (and forcing giant carrier bags full of bananas onto my colleagues), I decided to make a Bonfire night inspired Toffee Apple Cake.

I’ve adapted this recipe from one I saw on the Great British Bake Off. While the cake on there is an exotic creature full of caramel crowns and orange zest, this is a slightly more homely offering. However, looks aren’t everything, and this is full of squidgy toffee flavour (helped in no small part by the demerera sugar used in the sponge), warm, sweet wintry spices and a good whack of booze (I used Courvoisier, but any brandy will do. If you’ve got any Calvados hanging around, I’d suggest throwing that in there.) The proof of any pudding is in the eating, and when I took this cake to a party on Saturday night, it was quite gratifying to see it all gobbled up. If you want to get fancy, you could always smother it in custard, or a butterscotch sauce, but I preferred to just eat chunks of it whole while standing by my stove and basking in the radiance of a bit of much-needed-me-time.

TOFFEE APPLE CAKE

Adapted from a recipe originally seen on the Great British Bake Off

You will need:

For the toffee apple topping

• 200g caster sugar
• 3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced into medium-sized wedges (they should be roughly the thickness of a pound coin)

For the cake

• 225g unsalted butter, softened
• 125g demerera sugar
• 100g soft brown sugar
• 225g self-raising flour
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 4 medium free-range eggs, at room temperature
• 60ml tbsp whole milk
• 2 shots of brandy (I used Courvoisier)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Make It!

1. Thoroughly grease a medium sized springform cake tin (I like to spray the tin with spray oil for this – it works a treat.) Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4.
2. For the topping, put a small saucepan over a high heat. Add the sugar and three tablespoons of water and cook until it the sugar melts and turns amber – do not stir at any point, although you may want to give it a quick swirl towards the end to ensure that all the sugar is browned. Remove the pan from the heat and carefully pour the toffee into the lined baking tin, taking care to cover the base completely. BE CAREFUL – hot molten sugar can burn you quite badly, and it’s also a bugger to get off surfaces once it’s cooled. Place the apple wedges in three rows on top of the toffee.
3. For the cake, beat the butter, demerera sugar and soft brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Sift together the flour and bicarbonate of soda and add a tablespoon of this to the butter mix along with one egg. Mix until combined and repeat the process until all the flour and eggs have been used. Stir in the milk, brandy, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Pour into the cake tin and gently smooth with a spatula.
4. Bake the cake for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Using oven gloves, place a cooling rack over the tin and flip the cake over, making sure that you take care not to burn yourself on any hot caramel that may leak from the tin. Leave to cool for five – ten minutes, then remove from the tin and set aside to cool completely.
5. Cut yourself a big slice of this bad boy and enjoy.

Spiced Apple Crumble with Butterscotch Sauce

If you’ve ever listened to Tom Ravenscroft’s show on Radio 6 (a course of action which I highly recommend by the way), you’ll know that he occasionally plays a song about crumble. “Everybody’s good at cooking something/and I’m good at cooking crumble,” it cheerily proclaims. It is possibly the best – and only – crumble dedicated song that I’ve ever heard  (as well as a massive earworm) and one that I always find myself humming whenever I assemble flour and butter into a tasty crumbly topping. For, as you may have guessed if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’m quite fond of a good crumble.

However, I have a bit of a confession to make. While I’m a bit of a pro at making crumbles which feature vegetables and meat, or cakes with are topped with crunchy cinnamon crumbly bits, prior to making this, I’d never actually made a fruit crumble. I know. Blame it on my deprived childhood. My parents packed me off to Girl’s Brigade instead of Brownies.  Every time I hear someone talk about Brownies, it always involves them reminiscing about cooking lessons which involves being taught how to lovingly pull piping hot batches of baked fruit treats out of an Aga. Whereas us Girls Brigade types weren’t really trusted to be around open flames, leading us to have to be content with making  industrial amounts of Coconut Ice.  While my peers were climbing trees to gain merit badges while wearing jaunty yellow sweatshirts, I was figure marching around a drafty church hall dressed in possibly the world’s most unflattering polyester blazer-and-skirt combo.

So, when I was gripped by the idea of making a Spiced Apple Crumble with Butterscotch sauce on the first Sunny day we’ve had all Summer, I rolled up my sleeves and finally decided to lose my fruit crumble virginity. And, while it was good, it wasn’t quite right. Yes, the crumble was crunchy and spicy in all the right places. And yes, the butterscotch sauce was so good, I had to restrain myself from drinking it out of the glass in one sugar-scented gulp. But it wasn’t great. It was too sweet, too gloopy, just too much. I sadly left the remnants of my dessert on the kitchen counter, contemplating all the various uses for  butterscotch which didn’t just end up with me bathing in it.

Then, the next day, as I was readying myself for work, I decided to take a spoonful of leftover crumble. And it was delicious. A bit of a rest had allowed all of the flavours to settle and do their thing. The topping was full of delicious, toffee-tasting burnt sugar with a nice bit of roughage from the oats. The spiced apples were soft, squidgy and punchy with cinnamon and nutmeg. And, perhaps best of all, the butterscotch sauce had thickened and turned into something that was so good, I had to physically restrain myself from pouring it into a hipflask and taking it to work with me.

Is this crumble good enough to write a song about? I’m not sure. But feel free to try it for yourself and let me know. In the interim, I’ll just be over here in this corner spooning the remnants into my mouth and licking all the crumbs off my fingers.

SPICED APPLE CRUMBLE WITH BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE (Serves Two)
Butterscotch sauce recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen

For the Spiced Apple Crumble

• 200g cooking apples (you can use either Bramleys or Grannie Smith’s)
• 100g golden caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• Zest of a lemon
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 100g cold butter, cut into cubes
• 100g plain flour
• 100g brown sugar
• 50g porridge oats

Make It!

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and grease a medium-sized ovenproof dish.
2. Core and chop the apples into even-sized chunks and place them into a large bowl. Sprinkle the vanilla, lemon juice, sugar, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon over the fruit. Stir well until all the liquids and spices form a tasty, sweet-smelling slurry.
3. Place the flour and sugar in a large bowl and rub together to combine. Take a few cubes of butter, and rub them into the mixture. Keep doing this until all of the butter has been used up, and the mixture resembles sandy breadcrumbs. (You can do this with your food processor if you wish).
4. Spoon the apple mixture into the bottom of your ovenproof dish and then sprinkle the crumble mixture on top. You want to chunk it up a bit, so it looks a bit rough and quite ‘crumbly’. Sprinkle the porridge oats evenly on top of the crumb mix.
5. Bake the crumble in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the oats have turned brown and the fruit mixture is bubbling at the edges. Leave to cool until it is hot, but won’t give your mouth second-degree burns when you take a spoonful. I prefer this when it’s a bit cooler though, as this allows all of the flavours to coalesce.
6. Dollop a large portion in a bowl, and serve with the Butterscotch sauce drizzled over the top.

For the Butterscotch Sauce

• 125g unsalted butter
• 110g muscavado sugar
• 200 ml double cream
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, plus more to taste
• 1 shot of good quality whisky (I used Bowmore)

1. Melt butter in a medium sized saucepan over a medium heat. Add the sugar, cream and salt and whisk until well blended. Bring to a very gentle boil and cook for about five minutes, whisking occasionally.
2. Add the shot of whisky, and whisk to combine. Dip a spoon in the sauce and carefully taste the sauce (without burning your tongue!) to see if you want to add additional pinches or salt or splashes of whisky and vanilla. Tweak it to your taste, whisking well after each addition.
3. Serve drizzled over the crumble. The sauce will thicken as it cools. The leftover sauce can be refrigerated in an airtight container and reheated in a microwave or small saucepan.

Apple and Sultana Spice Loaf

I’ve just spent a very pleasant few days at Supersonic Festival in Birmingham, where I listened to a lot of very eclectic, VERY NOISY music (personal highlights being Cloaks, Scorn, Teeth of the Sea, Klaus Kinski (a group of boys who played guitars and screamed at lot whilst jumping off masonry and wearing short-shorts), Zombi, Cut Hands and Silver Apples), drank a lot of booze and ate a lot of cake.

I’m pretty much convinced that as well as putting on some of the most interesting bands of any music festival currently taking place in the U.K, Supersonic also serves up the best cake. Myself, Mr. Cay and a few other miscreants all spent a lovely hour on Sunday afternoon munching on sweet treats and cooing over our friends John and Maria’s adorable baby son. I indulged in a slice of Apple and Sultana Loaf, which was heady with cinnamon, and just the thing to recharge my batteries after two days of having my eardrums beaten to a bloody pulp with ‘power electronics’.

I’ve thought about that cake a lot since returning to Liverpool, so, I decided to head to my kitchen and attempt to recreate it for myself. Whereas the version I ate seemed to only use cinnamon, I decided to make mine slightly punchier (and a bit more Autumnal) by adding allspice, ginger and nutmeg. I also layered the top with some apple slices which were then sprinkled with a bit more cinnamon (you can never have enough cinnamon in my opinion) and some demerara sugar.

The finished product reminded me less of a cake, and more of a tea loaf – the kind of thing which is ideal when toasted and served up with plenty of butter. It was just the thing to munch on last night whilst Mr. Cay and I sat around our house listening to Whitehouse and planning world domination. It also made a pretty decent breakfast this morning too, even if the noisiest thing I was listening to was politicians arguing on Radio Four.

Seasonal, spicy and sumptuous, this Apple and Sultana Spice Loaf is a doddle to make and a dream to eat. Why not bake some tonight? Listening to extreme noise music whilst you’re making it is optional though.

APPLE AND SULTANA SPICE LOAF

You will need:

• 300g self raising flour
• 150g muscovado sugar
• 100g sultanas
• 270g bramley apple sauce
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 medium sized Granny Smith apple
• 1 level teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 level teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon dried ginger
• 3/4 teaspoon allspice
• 5 tablespoons milk
• Pinch of salt

Make It!

1. Heat your oven to 200 degrees C/Gas Mark 6, and grease up a loaf tin. If you’re lazy, or just have a pound shop conveniently near your office (I LOVE YOU HOME BARGAINS), nab yourself a sillicon loaf dish for some loose change (you can thank me for this later).
2. Sift the flour into a large bowl, then add the raisins, muscovado sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, dried ginger and salt. Take a wooden spoon and mash the whole lot together until well combined.
3. Add the apple sauce, eggs and milk to the dry ingredients and stir until a thick gloopy batter has been formed. Spoon the mixture into your loaf tin and level out the surface with a spatula.
4. Chop your apple into thin slices, and layer these over the top of the batter. Sprinkle with cinnamon and some demerara sugar if you have any handy (if you don’t, ordinary sugar will work just fine).
5. Bake the loaf in the centre of the oven for around an hour, or until it feels firm to the touch, and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the middle. Turn out onto a wire rack, and leave to cool for half an hour.
6. This loaf is great both on its own, or served toasted and slathered in butter. It also goes very well with a large mug of Earl Grey.