Ramsbury Apple Cake Recipe

Ramsbury Apple Cake Recipe

This homemade recipe took three attempts to get right. It’s a ‘Goldilocks cake’ where my first apple cake attempt was too sweet, the second apple cake was too crumbly BUT the third apple cake was JUST RIGHT!

 

This Apple Cake Recipe is brilliant because I’ve used half the sugar and half the butter of the usual cake recipes and it’s crammed with delicious apples – the taste is amazing.
Makes a large cake – perfect for using up all those windfall apples or perhaps even sharing!
Prep: 30 mins
Baking: 1hr 10m

Ingredients
· 3 cups of Self-raising flour
· 4 large Eggs
· 4 tsp Baking powder
· 150g Butter
· ½ cup Caster sugar
· ½ cup brown Muscavado sugar
· Zest and juice of 1 unwaxed Lemon
· 2 tbls ground almonds
· 8 Medium apples diced – 4 red & 4 Bramley

Apples first….
Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees
Cut and dice the apples into a large bowl
Zest then squeeze the lemon
Pour then mix the lemon juice in with the apples, putting the zest to one side

Then the dry stuff…
Mix the dry ingredients flour, sugar, baking powder, almonds in a large bowl
Add softened butter (saving a little to grease the cake tin), lemon zest and eggs
Cream the ingredients together using an electric hand mixer. It will initially go quite crumbly, then just when you’re thinking it will never cream – bang!

Mix it up!
Once creamed, fold in the diced apples and lemon juice. Mix very well before putting into a large greased cake tin.
Cover the top of the cake tin with grease proof paper then bake in the oven on a low heat for 1hr.
After 1 hour, remove the grease proof paper then cook for a further 10-15 minutes at 180 degrees.

Once baked, leave the cake to rest for 10 minutes before turning out. Decorate as you please when cool.

Notes
*Refined sugar is substituted with the natural sweetness of extra Bramley apples which turn to mush and absorb into the cake mixture under a slow heat. The red apples provide mouthfuls of sweet apple bites as they much firmer than the Bramleys and more able to withstand the temperature.
*Leaving the apples unpeeled gives extra texture and fibre plus it saves you the job of peeling!
*The baking paper over the cake helps to retain moisture and prevents burning.
*Leave out the almonds if you’re taking it to a party, work or school. So many people seem to have nut allergies these days.
*Try decorating with Icing sugar, cream and seasonal raspberries (yum), or present just as it is. I lay off on using cinnamon this time of year – its autumn, not Christmas (yet)!