Bramley Apple & Calvados Cake

Scrumping!

We are very lucky to have a Bramley apple tree in our next-door neighbour’s garden, and even luckier to have a generous neighbour that tells us to help ourselves!

This year the tree has produced more beautiful looking, delicious fruits than ever.

We’ve already made a number of apple crumbles, which have been portioned up and put in the freezer. This week though we decided to make an apple cake. I have to give credit to the garden apprentice for the addition of the calvados, and wow, what a difference it makes!

Calvados is a spirit along the lines of brandy, but rather than being made from grapes, it’s made from apples. They distil cider, which is made from specially grown and selected apples, over 200 named varieties.

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Mum Makes The Best Sponge Cake!

Making cakes is something I grew up with. I would awake every Saturday morning to the gorgeous smell of cakes baking. I’d jump out of bed (not my normal style), and rush downstairs to help – well I mainly watched and waited for the treat of licking the spoon!

As I got older, I was allowed to mix the cake for the allotted 2 minutes. Mums’ cakes were so well regarded that when she was younger, if she visited anyone without taking a cake with her, there were murmurs of complaint.

Mums standard sponge cake recipe is so simple, it’s just 6oz of Butter, Flour, Sugar, 3 eggs and 1tsp of baking powder. All the ingredients go into a mixing bowl together and it’s mixed with an electric whisk for 2 minutes exactly. Could it be any easier?

And yet, as others tried, theirs never came out as light and fluffy. I remember her being asked numerous times for her recipe. I think they all thought she was holding back some secret tip.

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When I moved away from from home and started making my own cakes, I would always forget how many eggs to use and have to ring my mum – this is obviously before the internet!

I’d say “I know it’s six ounces of everything, but I can’t remember how many eggs.

I eventually got it into my head that it was one egg per two ounces, easy, until I bought some new scales that only weighed in grams (which I mainly prefer), although one egg to 56.699g isn’t quite so easy to remember!

I ungraded my scales to a set that measure in grams and ounces. And went back to weighing in ounces for cakes and Yorkshire puds!

Baking with Garden Produce

Over the years I’ve made cakes with lots of different ingredients from the garden, and I adjust the wet and dry ingredients to suit. For example, when making our Cherry & Courgette cake, you need to up the dry ingredients to counter the wetness of the squash.

Using ground almonds in your cake is also a great way to add protein, but also absorbs moisture really well, stopping you from having a ‘soggy bottom’!

These days I very rarely make a standard sponge cake, preferring cakes made with fruit or vegetables and also using much less sugar.

This is mainly down to personal preference, and because we usually eat our cake for breakfast so don’t want it too sweet, but also, we now know that too much sugar is bad for you. Also, when adding fruit to a cake, it comes with its own natural sugars.

Today’s apple cake would work very well with a standard 8oz cake mix. 8oz flour, sugar, butter with 4 eggs and a tsp of baking powder.

However, I’m only adding half the amount of sugar than my mum’s original recipe. Using half flour, and half ground almonds, because I like the flavour. Some bicarbonate of soda, which gives the cake a crispy outer layer and obviously adding apples, and calvados.

Also, rather than dividing the mixture between two round cake tins which you would with a traditional sponge. All of the mixture goes into a one loaf tin, allowing you to put a layer of apples in the middle.

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The Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 Large Cooking Apples – Ideally Bramleys
• 4oz / 114g Flour
• 4oz / 114g Ground Almonds
• 1tsp Baking Powder
• 1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
• 4oz / 114g Sugar
• 8oz / 227g Butter – but a 250g block is fine
• 3 Eggs
• 1 tbsp Calvados

Equipment

• Measuring Scales
• Mixing Bowl
• Loaf Cake Tin, with greaseproof paper
• Electric Mixer
• Spatula

Method

Assemble the ingredients and equipment.

Pre-heat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4.

Grease and line the loaf tin.

Weigh out the ingredients before you start chopping up the apples, as they will start to go brown.

Weigh the flour, the sugar, and the ground almonds, adding the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into the ground almonds.

Pop them all into the large mixing bowl.

Open the block of butter and cut into slices, leaving it on its wrapper.

Crack the eggs into a bowl.

Peel, core and chop the apples into small chunks, around one centimetre/half an inch. But don’t be too fussy!

Now add the eggs and butter to the dry ingredients already in the mixing bowl.

Mix the cake ingredients (minus the apple) for one minute with an electric mixer. Then add the calvados.

Mix for a further minute.

Add half of the cake mixture into the loaf tin. Sprinkle the apple chunks over the surface equally. Spoon the other half of the mixture on top.

Even the surface carefully, but don’t squash it.

Pop into the oven for 35 minutes. Then test by sticking a skewer or sharp knife into the cake. If it comes out clean it’s done.

If not, give it another 10 minutes and repeat with the skewer.

Remove from the tin using the excess greaseproof paper and pop onto a cooling rack. As ever, try to resist cutting the cake until its cool. Enjoy with a blob of yogurt for a scrumptious breakfast and don’t worry, the alcohol is cooked out.

Stay safe & happy scrumping – with permission obviously!