As comforting as a warm blanket...

This year our orchard is barren, except for a single lonely plum that first the wasps got and then the chickens, so it was with great glee that I heard "help yourself because we won't be doing anything with them" from our neighbours whose apple tree is laden with fruit. I've had rich pickings from their tree before but that was when it belonged to someone else and despite them living next door for decades, they had never worked out what variety they are. It's as if they are a hybrid, not tart enough to strip the enamel from your teeth like a genuine cooker, yet not sweet enough to delight in eating from the tree. I cannot bare anything to go to waste so I am on a mission to use as many as the apples as I can. Even the windfalls are being fed to the chickens, which of course they amuse themselves over for hours on end. In my endeavour to cook my way through the harvest I have devised a new recipe, a hybrid of ingredients taken from my 2 favourite apple cakes and to be honest, without a hint of smugness, I'm pretty pleased with it!

Potty's Apple Dessert Cake
when miraculously the apples stay on top!

Potty's Apple Dessert Cake (haven't come up with a witty name yet either)
Serves 6-8 although if you have greedy hungry husbands like mine only 4!
Oven set to 140 fan /160 or gas mark 3
Baking time 1 1/4-1 1/2 hours
Grease a 20cm/8" loose bottomed tin
Ingredients:
225 g Self raising flour
1 level tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 (half) tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp mixed spice
225g caster sugar (although I've successfully made it with granulated)
2 Eggs (always free range)
150 g butter, melted
350g cooking apples (or any apples to be fair) cored and peeled and sliced (nothing fancy)

Method:
1) Get a big mixing bowl, add all the ingredients EXCEPT the apples, mix well to combine, then beat for about a minute.
2) Spread half the mixture into the tin, then pile the sliced apples onto this layer mostly piling them in e centre. Then pour over the rest if the batter, or scrape it out of the bowl with a silicone spatula and dollop it over. Don't panic it often looks like a kitchen version of a car crash at this point! The mixture will melt and cover the apples. If you wanted to you could scatter over some flaked almonds at this point.
3) Pop it into the oven for 1 1/4  - 1 1/2 hours, until the cake starts to leave the sides of the tin and it is firm but not solid on top when pressed. 
4) Guve it a few minutes in the tin before carefully turning it out onto your serving dish. Dust with icing sugar and a little extra cinnamon if its a cold day, and serve with loads of extra thick cream, or creme fraiche , or even ice cream!

I offered my husband a slice earlier, I hadn't even decorated the cake, and this is what I found...

A quarter gone!! (When the apples go to the bottom!!)

The snuggly warm blanket?

He said it was as comforting as a warm blanket, just not quite as big! Praise indeed, although with a slice that big it was nearly as big as a blanket. I offered him a second piece, tongue in cheek, and he politely declined saying that he didn't want to be greedy! I love his passion for food which is never ever combined with any guilt - just pleasure.