An abundance of apples!

The last recipe was about apples and I'm afraid the next few recipes are going to be about apples too. There's an apple and almond cake baking in the oven as I write this and a half eaten spiced apple cake in the fridge and we have an enormous bowl full of apples in the kitchen and more apples are falling off the apple tree outside. It's apple mania!

I think we're going to have to look into making some apple chutney and maybe even some apple cider (now that would be exciting though I'm thinking complicated too!) to keep these apples under control. The apple cake recipes don't use a lot of apples so next week's task is finding a recipe which uses an abundance of apples.

In the meantime, here is the spiced apple cake recipe which I found on the Channel 4 website and is one of Gordon Ramsay's recipes. Talking about Gordon Ramsay I'm still sulking about the fact that La Garrigue, the French Bistro in Edinburgh, didn't win the French restaurant heat in his Best Restaurant series. For me, they were by far the better French restaurant. I'm also sorry that we never got to go to the restaurant when we were in Edinburgh in August. Next time!

In the original recipe the apple mixture is divided up into small baking dishes and a piping bag is used to squeeze the sponge mixture on top but as we didn't have small baking dishes (or a piping bag!) we opted for placing it all into one large baking dish.

(Note: If you have self-raising flour you can substitute the 125g plain flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and pinch of salt with 125g self-raising flour)

Spiced apple cake

Ingredients

For the sponge

125g plain flour
50g butter

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 tbsp caster sugar
1tsp vanilla essence

1 egg

100ml milk (or enough to bring mixture up to 110ml)

1 orange zest

For the apple mixture

4 apples

50g unsalted butter

2 tbsp honey

100g dates, diced

1tsp ground cinnamon

Flaked almonds for sprinkling

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl.

3. Cut the butter into cubes and rub together into the flour mixture with your fingers until it resembles bread crumbs. (Licking your fingers after doing this is a very tasty treat!)

4. Beat the egg in a measuring jug with the vanilla essence then add the milk so the mixture reaches the 100ml mark. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture, add a pinch of the orange zest and mix together.

5. Peel, core and dice the apples. Add the butter to a large deep frying pan and toss the apples into the butter mixture and then add the honey and mix through again.

6. Add the chopped dates, cinnamon and the rest of the orange zest to the apple mixture. Cook for a few minutes making sure the apples are evenly coated in the honey.

7. Add the apples to a baking dish and pour the sponge mixture on top.

8. Scatter the sponge with flaked almonds and bake in the oven for 18 minutes until golden brown on top.

9. Dust with icing sugar and serve with vanilla ice cream or double cream or custard!