Spiced Apple Cake

When experimenting with recipes, I have the habit of cooking tiny quantities - to avoid the likelihood of gaining about a stone in weight and using up twenty eggs a week. Today however, only a big cake would do. I wanted something I could slice a hefty wedge out of, not another dainty cupcake-sized trial. With it still being a bit wintery, I fancied something with a bit of spice and fairly dense.  I found two spiced apple cake recipes which looked worth a try, so I thought I'd combine the two. This recipe has been adapted from Mary Berry's Apple and Cinnamon cake in her Baking Bible, as well as Gordon Ramsay's Spiced Apple Cake in Healthy Appetite. I used Mary Berry's recipe for instruction on quantities and method, but I looked to Gordon for inspiration for a few flavour tweaks. I found Gordon's recipe included a more varied range of spices and he used all wholemeal flour rather than just white. I set on a 50:50 ratio for the flour as I thought a bit of wholemeal would give it a slightly nuttier flavour, but I didn't want to make it too dense by using all wholemeal. I also added mixed spice to the cake mix, rather than just adding cinnamon to the apple filling, as in Mary's case - I fancied that warming flavour spreading the whole way through.  For my own personal adaptation, I removed the walnuts from the cake mixture in Mary Berry's recipe, reserving them only for the top - this was only because my dad's not a fan of nuts in cakes, so I substituted them for extra sultanas - but you could just as easily add them back in (by using 100g each of sultanas and walnuts, rather than 200g sultanas).

Method and Ingredients:

Grease and line a deep, loose bottomed 23cm cake tin.

Beat together 225g light soft brown sugar and 225g butter or spread.

Add 3 large eggs, 200g sultanas, 100g self raising wholemeal flour, 125g self raising plain flour, 2 level teaspoons of baking powder and 2 level teaspoons of mixed spice.

Fold it all together and spoon half the mixture into the tin.

Peel and core the apples then chop them pretty finely (I diced rather than sliced) and combine them with 1 level teaspoon of cinnamon.

Tip this apple mixture into your tin (yes, it does look a lot!) and spoon on the remaining half of the mixture.

Sprinkle with some more light soft brown sugar (or I imagine demerara would work really well - I would have used it, but I ran out) and bake in a 180 degrees c oven (or 160 if you use fan) for 1 and a quarter to 1 and a half hours.

Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

Dust with icing sugar to serve (and I'd recommend serving it with creme fraiche, greek yogurt or cream whilst warm).

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