Apple Cake

This is a picture of the Apple Cake that I made for tea today (Saturday). I got the recipe from the May 2009 “Sainsbury’s Magazine” but I added extra ingredients as my cake tin was larger than the 20 cm one they suggested (mine is 24 cm). We had a slice each for tea, which used about 1/4 of it. It would go well as a dessert too with cream or custard.

Recipe

• 125 g soft butter (I used 150 g)
• 125 g caster sugar (I used 150 g)
• 3 large eggs separated (I used 4)
• grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
• 125 g of plain flour (I used 150 g)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 3 small, good flavoured, firm dessert apples
• 2 tablespoons of flaked almonds

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (fan 160 degrees, gas 4). Grease the tin and line it with baking parchment.

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy and light in colour then add the egg yolks one by one beating as you go, then the lemon zest and juice. Sieve in the flour and baking powder and a pinch of salt and mix.

Whisk the egg whites until they are stiff, then add a small amount to the egg / flour mixture and stir it in. Then gently fold in the rest of the egg whites a spoon at a time, trying to keep the air in the mixture as you go.

Peel core and halve the apples. With the curved side uppermost, without cutting all the way through make as many fine slices as you can lengthways in each half.

Spoon the mixture into the greased, lined tin,then push the apples into the mixture, curved size upwards, evenly spaced. Sprinkle with the almonds and bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes (mine took 50 minutes) or until golden and firm. A thin skewer will come our clean.

Allow it to stand for a few minutes in the tin and then take it out to cool on a wire rack. We ate it slightly warm. It tastes lemony, and the apples are still slightly firm, not mushy.