thursday baking - apple spice cake

This delicously spiced cake was baked by our Aunty Marg, who kindly delivered a chunk of it at morning tea yesterday, along with a copy of the recipe. What a perfect cake to bake in autumn; it will be the next thing I bake. It is quite a humble kind of cake, and would be nice served warm as a pudding with a dollop of cream, or as is with a cup of tea.

Apple Spice Cake


2 cooking apples
1 c sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c flour
1 egg
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 c sticky raisins (soak in boiling water while you mix the other ingredients)
4 oz butter (113g)
1/2 c walnuts



Peel, core and dice apples, sprinkle with sugar. In a large bowl melt the butter and beat egg into it, then add the apples. Sift in the dy ingredients and stir well. Finally stir in the raisins and walnuts. Pour into a lined tin and bake at 180c for 50-60 minutes*. Leave to cool before removing from the tin. Dust with icing sugar to serve.




* I have since made this cake, I baked it in a 20cm square cake tin and found it cooked in just 35-40 minutes on fanbake.

Thursday baking - Dutch apple cake

Dutch apple cake is more pudding than cake. It is my favourite apple dessert and I have the Horgan family to thank for it. It's one of those recipes that makes something delicious out of next-to-nothing in just a few minutes. The walnuts are optional but worth adding if you have them.

Dutch Apple Cake

2 eggs

1 cup of sugar

6 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup of chopped walnuts

6 apples peeled and diced

30g butter (melted)

Preheat oven to 160C. Beat egg and sugar until frothy. Mix in dry ingredients and then stir in the apple. Put mixture into a greased dish and pour melted butter on top. Bake for around 30 minutes or until it looks cooked. Dust with icing sugar and serve warm with cream, icecream or yoghurt.

A few of our favourite things...

Apples from the tree to the table....
Miriam: I spent the weekend at a friends beach house at Papamoa. Their apple tree needed harvesting, and so we put in a team effort of peeling and slicing, and I whipped up a crumble topping. I didn't have a recipe, so just freestyled it, with approx 1 cup of rolled oats, 1 cup flour, 1tsp cinnamon, 1tsp baking powder, 3/4 cup brown sugar and 150g butter. I melt the butter and add it to the dry ingredients, so no need to get my hands dirty rubbing the butter into the flour. Normally I'd add nuts to the topping too, but we were in a nut free zone. I think of crumbles as autumnal treats, but this was delicious as a summer desert too. It seems extra special (and delicious) when you can see the tree the apples come from!

Becs: I love coffee and love the Rocket espresso machine Mike and I received as a wedding gift. I just have one coffee a day and it needs to be good. This pink mug is another of my favourite things; I collect Crown Lynn colour glaze china and a recent acquisition was a set of 5 dainty mugs like that pictured above. They are lovely to hold and drink out of.

Libby: Lately I've been helping myself to these huge blue hydrangeas growing alongside the steps down to our flat. You don't need many stems to fill a vase, some are so enormous that just one will do! It's lovely to have fresh flowers on the table and even better that they're free!

for old times sake...

In my early cooking days as a young schoolgirl I used to love poring over Mum's vast collection of Australian Women's Weekly Cookbooks, seeking inspiration for potential creations. I was particularly fascinated with replicating 'bought' food at home, hence the lemon chicken and fried rice banquet from AWW Chinese Cooking in attempt to rival the local takeaway's version, the cream buns like they sold down the road at Geyserland Hot Bread Shop, the numerous attempts to bake a deep dish pan pizza as crispy bottomed as those that were all the rage at Pizza Hutt at the time, and the deepfried potato scallops just like the potato fritters from the local fish & chip shop. Perhaps it was a deprivation of takeaways in my early childhood that fueled the desire to make my own?!

At the other, more high-brow end of the culinary spectrum, I was precociously attracted to quite complex recipes with intriguing ingredient combinations and elaborate garnishing. Hence the appeal of the - exotic sounding at the time - Cheese Crusted Apple Tart. This recipe featured in an AWW book titled 'Easy Entertaining'.

Our lifestyles seem to have changed quite a lot since this book was printed in the 1980's, as these days making pastry, chilling, rolling and blind baking it, meanwhile peeling, chopping and cooking the apple filling, preparing the crumble topping, followed by more cooking of the assembled tart (not to mention whipping and piping the cream garnish) wouldn't really cut it in the easy entertaining stakes!

However, despite the labour intensive process this dessert became a family favourite. I decided to make it recently for nostalgic reasons - piped cream, sprinkled cinnamon and all - and we found it to be just as delicious as ever. The cheese pastry is really tasty, and a nice contrast to the sweet filling. it would also make a delicious, crispy pastry for savoury tart.

Cheese-crusted Apple Tart

Pastry

1 c flour, 1/2 c self raising flour, 2 tbsp castor sugar, 125g butter, 1/2c grated tasty cheese
1/2 c water, approx

Filling

4 large granny smith apples ( I doubled this to give the filling more height)

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp plain flour

1/3c sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Topping

1/3c brown sugar

1/3 c flour

1/2 c almonds

60g butter

For pastry, combine flours and sugar, rub in butter, add cheese and enough water to mix to a firm dough. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the filling, coarsely chop the apples and add to a saucepan with the lemon juice. Cover and cook for 5-10 minutes until tender. Add the flour, sugar and cinnamon.

To prepare the topping combine sugar, flour and nuts in a bowl or food processor. Rub in butter until mixture is coarse and crumbly.

Roll pastry out and line a 23cm flan tin (preferably loose bottomed) Cover with a sheet of baking paper, fill with blind bake beans and bake at 190 for 7 minutes. Remove paper and blind bake, and another 7 minutes. Remove and cool.

Place filling into the cooked pastry case, and sprinkle with the topping. Bake at 190c for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180c for another 15 minutes.

If you are after the old school look, when cool pipe whipped cream swirls on top, dust with cinnamon and sprinkle with toasted almonds.

Thursday baking - Aporo Treat

Our challenge to bake our way through A Treasury of NZ Baking...

I love apple desserts and ground almond-based cakes so was intrigued by this recipe for Aporo (apple) Treat - it's gluten-free and uses LSA (ground linseed, sunflower & almond mix) and ground almonds. I had high expectations but I have to say I was disappointed - with apples, honey and all that sugar it was too sweet. I also found the texture a bit too mushy.

The recipe was a bit vague on a few things - it didn't specify what size tin to use or cooking time ("whack dessert in oven for over an hour until it looks firm like a cake"). This was slightly annoying.

If making again I would leave out the honey (I enjoy honey on toast but don't like it as a sweetener), reduce the sugar and put more sliced apples on top (the one sliced apple specified in the recipe wasn't enough, two or three would be about right). I'd also use different apples as the Granny Smiths and Galas I used cooked down too much and turned to mush (not sure if this was mean't to happen or not). Braeburns (or something similar) might hold their shape better.

The recipe suggested serving with acidophilus yoghurt which would've helped cut through the sweetness. I didn't have any so served with frozen yoghurt/ice cream - further adding to the sweetness!

So Aporo Treat wasn't as much of a treat as I had hoped... in fact the recipe made such a big tray it became Aporo Chore trying to get through it all. It was best on the day it was made so unless you're expecting a crowd, halve the recipe. The recipe states it "serves 4" but these must be very generous servings! My tray would have easily served 8-10.

Aporo Treat (Anne Thorpe, pg 18)

1 cup water
Juice of one lemon
4 apples peeled, cored and chopped
230g caster sugar
4 tsp ground ginger
180g LSA
180g ground almonds
1/4 cup honey
3 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 extra apple, cut into thin slices
1 tbsp walnut oil (I used butter)

Preheat oven to 165 degrees Celsius. Pour water into a saucepan, add lemon juice and chopped apple. Boil down for five minutes, until the mixture is almost dry.

In a small bowl, reserve a pinch of sugar, ginger, and a good pinch of almonds and LSA to sprinkle on top of the apples before they go in the oven (I took a few pinches of each). Mix.

Whisk the honey and eggs together until creamy. Add the remaining dry ingredients and the apple mixture. Wizz together in a food proccessor.

Line a tin with baking paper and grease it. Add the batter. Fan slivers of apple over the top and brush with walnut oil. Tap the reserved sugar, ginger, ground almonds and LSA over the top and whack the dessert in the oven for over an hour until it looks firm like a cake. (It only took about 50 mins in my oven). When cooked it should still be slightly soft on the inside.

Serve warm or at room temperature with acidophilus yoghurt. Keeps in the fridge for 3-4 days.