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.

Doctor meeting, Internet Explorer 8 and McAfee Security Center/BT NetProtect Plus, Earth Hour

We met with the Doctor on Friday. Good news (of a sort) he is going to schedule surgery to fix the problem and he has confirmed that it isn't cancer either. We now have to wait for the hospital to get back to us with the date of surgery.

Yesterday I installed Internet Explorer 8. I had been putting it off as the McAfee website says that it does not support IE 8 as it is beta software. When I DID try the Beta version of IE 8 I got a blank screen in McAfee Security Center which made it impossible to use, so I had to uninstall the Beta version. Recently however I downloaded BT Netprotect Plus which is the BT branded version of McAfee Security Center (without the Spam filter). BT's website also said that IE 8 is not supported with NetProtect Plus. This is despite the fact that BT/Yahoo are promoting IE 8 on their home page. When I checked on Friday on McAfee's website they said there was a problem with Microsoft's software and they would not support IE 8 until it is fixed.

I raised a support query with Microsoft. They came back to me saying they could not comment on third party software but suggested I installed the software in "safe mode".

I thought "huh?" and "why?" but I went along with the instructions provided. However after downloading the install package and trying to run it in "safe" mode I was given an error and told the installation could not proceed.

After restarting in normal mode I ran the install package again. It took only a few seconds to complete.

I checked BT NetProtect Plus/McAfee Security Center and it is working just fine. IE 8 is working fine too. It still doesn't load as fast as Google Chrome or Opera but the extra functionality is on par with these two if not better in some places.

When I checked BT's website and links today it appears that they have removed the warnings now! You can download IE 8 from Microsoft by clicking here.


I cooked (shop bought) crispy duck with pancakes, and an apple and blackberry crumble (home made). All seemed to go down well. The cats liked the left over duck!


Crumble Recipe
7 oz plain flour
1 oz whole wheat plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 oz unsalted butter at room temperature
5 oz dark brown (molasses) sugar
4 bramley (cooking) apples (about 2 lbs)
4 oz blackberries (NOT blackcurrants)
1/2 oz caster sugar


Cut the butter into cubes and rub it into the flour and baking powder until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then mix in the dark brown sugar.
Peel and slide the apples, add the caster sugar, stir and microwave until slightly soft.
Mix in the blackberries.
Cover with the crumble topping.
Bake in the over at gas mark 5 for 40-50 minutes

serve with custard

Last night was "Earth Hour" - we dutifully sat in near darkness for over an hour. Luckily we were only watching TV! We watched Housesitter with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn and then part of Brokeback Mountain. We gave up on Brokeback Mountain as it was too difficult - they kept mumbling and had strong "southern" accents too.

Blackmoor Apple Tasting

We went to the Blackmoor Estate Apple Tasting on Sunday. Apparently they have been doing it for nearly 40 years now. We think that it is just the right sort of community event, not over-pretentious or trying to do anything else like carry a political agenda. Local stall holders, craft fair, community groups and activities for children. What more could you ask for?
It was a lovely day. We walked through the woods behind the church to the estate and then joined in the tasting. We'd waited until about 3 pm so the queues for tasting weren't too bad. Maria's favourite was the Reubens variety which I liked too, but I preferred the pears.
We bought some earrings for Maria at a craft stall, some local honey and some (Lyme Bay) fruit wine too.
We sampled the other English wine, which wasn't that good really.
They had sold out of Reubens in the shop, but we got some other apples and pears