We’re at the very end of apple season, with the last apples for the year arriving this week. Many of these apples are still totally delicious and crunchy on the inside, but starting to mark on the skin, as they’re not treated or waxed to extend their shelf life. We’re madly preserving them at Gathered by drying in the dehydrator and will chop and freeze some for future baking too.
If any of you know of Belinda Jeffery, you will know she is an Australian cook who is also a master cake maker. I discovered her decades ago when she wrote recipes for Delicious Magazine and now own many of her books - not one recipe has failed yet. What follows is a recipe taken from her website for apple, pecan and cinnamon crumble cake. It’s quick to throw together, uses half a kilo of apples and is perfect with a cup of tea. If you give it a go, let us know!
Apple, pecan and cinnamon crumble cake by Belinda Jeffery
(10 serves)
Cinnamon and pecan crumble
130g lightly roasted pecans
60g soft brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
40g cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
Cake
1 cup (150g) self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
200g caster sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
150g unsalted butter, cut into chunks, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup (125ml) milk, at room temperature
500g (about 4 smallish) apples, peeled, halved and cored, then cut into 4mm thick slices
Icing sugar, for dusting
Preheat your oven to 180C. Butter a 25cm springform tin, and line the base with buttered baking paper, dust the tin with flour, then set it aside.
For the cinnamon and pecan crumble, put all the ingredients into a food processor fitted with the steel blade, and pulse until the pecans are coarsely chopped and mixture is crumbly (be careful not to let it go too far or it will turn into a paste). Tip it into a bowl and pop it in the fridge.
Add the flour, baking powder and salt to the food processor, and whiz them together for 10 seconds or so, then tip them into a bowl too. Now, put the sugar and eggs into the processor bowl and whiz them together for 1 minute. Add the butter and process for another minute, stopping and scraping down the sides once or twice, until the mixture is creamy. Stir the vanilla into the milk then add half this mixture and half the flour mixture to the processor and whiz briefly, scrape down the sides again. Add the remaining milk and flour mixtures to the processor and whiz just until the batter is smooth – don’t worry if it looks a bit curdled at this stage, it will be fine.
Spread the batter evenly into the prepared cake tin. Arrange the apples slices in a layer covering the batter, partially pushing the slices into the batter. Sprinkle the crumble in a thick layer all over the apple, then gently shake the tin to level the crumble.
Pop the tin in the oven and bake the cake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes or until the top is dark golden and a fine skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Remove the cake to a wire rack and leave it to cool in the tin for about 6 minutes (it will sink a bit) then gently invert it onto the rack (If you sit a sheet of baking paper on top of the cake before you do this, it will stop the crumble flying off). Remove the lining paper then sit another rack on top, and invert the cake again so it’s crumble-side up. Serve warm or room temperature. Just before serving, dust the top with icing sugar.
Chicken tikka masala is back in the online store this week. Made from scratch by us, using free range chicken, yoghurt, tomato and dry roasted spices. Pumpkin pieces are thrown in too, adding a delicious sweetness and texture. It’s kept kid friendly by omitting chilli, so makes a perfect mid-week healthy dinner. One container is enough for around three serves.