So, we are beginning to enter the season where trees are just about ready to burst into fruit, walking around I keep seeing apples forming and nuts just beginning to take shape. Given this I thought it would be ideal to offer you a recipe appropriate to this time of year, so here is a Apple and Hazelnut cake for you to try.
Hazelnut trees are very common in the UK, however you'll be hardpressed to get your hands on any before the squirrals do! But maybe you'll be lucky enough to forage your own hazelnuts, if not I have had more success foraging for apples, once you know where a good tree is you can go back until the seasons over.
There are 4 tree ingredients in this recipe, Hazelnuts, Apples, Lemon and Cinnamon. I would like to thank London Liberty Girl for the use of this recipe.
Ingredients
450g apples you can use cookers such as Bramleys or any eaters
Juice of half a lemon
225g butter
175g caster sugar
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence — do not substitute flavouring. Better to use nothing.
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
30g ground hazelnuts
Directions
Hazelnut trees are very common in the UK, however you'll be hardpressed to get your hands on any before the squirrals do! But maybe you'll be lucky enough to forage your own hazelnuts, if not I have had more success foraging for apples, once you know where a good tree is you can go back until the seasons over.
There are 4 tree ingredients in this recipe, Hazelnuts, Apples, Lemon and Cinnamon. I would like to thank London Liberty Girl for the use of this recipe.
Ingredients
450g apples you can use cookers such as Bramleys or any eaters
Juice of half a lemon
225g butter
175g caster sugar
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence — do not substitute flavouring. Better to use nothing.
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
30g ground hazelnuts
Directions
- Preheat oven to 180°C or 350F, gas mark 4
- Grease 8inch cake tin.
- Peel, core & chop the apples into small chunks. To stop them going brown, squeeze the lemon juice over.
- Put the butter and both sugars into the mixing bowl, and cream together. You are aiming for a light & fluffy start to the process.
- Add the vanilla essence, and then one egg at a time, along with a spoonful of flour, to avoid the mixture curdling.
- Then add the rest of the flour a heaping spoonful at a time, followed by the rest of the dry ingredients: cinnamon, ground hazelnuts & baking powder
- Add the apple pieces to the mix. Fold them all together. Don’t worry if the mixture is stiffer than you would want in normal cake. You need it like that as the apples will leach their juice during baking. Mix really well so the apple is distributed throughout the cake batter.
- Pour the mixture into the lined cake tin
- Pop in oven for 45 minutes. You may find that the top browns very quickly, so try adding a piece of paper over the top of the cake at this point and then cook for a further 15 minutes for an hour total.
- Test the cake for done-ness at 45 minutes with a skewer. If the cake is cooked, the skewer will come out clean. Test in several places around the centre of the cake because if you hit a piece of apple the skewer will come out pretty clean giving a false positive so to speak. If there is any hint of batter on the skewer it needs more cooking.
- When you think the cake is done, remove the tin from the oven, leave on an airing rack to cool.
- Sift icing sugar over the top to finish and enjoy eating.
