Apple lovers, apple festival goers and apple growers will be keen to make the best tasting apple pies, apple cakes and apple drinks including ciders.
Cooks with a backyard orchard will wish to realise the overnight loss of crops as 'windfall' into recipes that need the flavour of a fresh cooking apple and rely less on apple appearance.
Apple Cake
The Windfall Apple Cake is an original recipe that takes inspiration from three apple cakes from England and Ireland:
- Cloves are added to the cake mixture of the Dorset Cake from the South West of England. Cinnamon is used in the Windfall Apple Cake to bring this warmth.
- Apple Cake, a traditional Irish food, generally uses apples, raisins and hazelnuts. Generous amounts of raisins are used in the Windfall Apple Cake with the apples.
- From the East of England, Lincolnshire Apple Cake, the apples are stewed in cinnamon. In the Windfall Apple Cake, line is used to slow down the oxidation of the apples once cut before sprinkling a delicate amount of cinnamon to coat all the thinly sliced freshly dropped cooking apples.
Windfall Apple Cake Recipe
Windfall Apple Cake has a thick layer of apples baked between sweet sponge and covered with raisins. It tastes good warm and served cold as slices of cake, cake fingers or squares for including in a packed lunch or for eating after playing outdoors.
Ingredients:
For cooking in a 23cm / 9 in cake tin
- 450g or 1lb windfall cooking apples
- Lime zest (grated lime rind) from 1 lime
- Freshly squeezed juice of 1 lime
- 175g or 6 oz butter
- 175g or 6 oz light brown sugar
- 3 large free range eggs
- 225g or 8 oz wholemeal self-raising flour
- 2.5 ml or ½ tsp baking powder
- 2.5ml or ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 150g or 6 oz raisins
Directions:
- Peel, core and thinly cube the windfall cooking apples. Sprinkle with the lime juice and set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- In a bowl, cream the butter, lime zest and the light brown sugar until light and fluffy as shown in the second photograph below.
- Beat the eggs and then add to the bowl gradually.
- Sift the wholemeal self raising flour and baking powder together into the bowl.
- Fold into the creamed mixture.
- Grease and base line a 23 cm / 9 in round cake tin as shown in the third photograph below.
- Spoon half of the mixture into the prepared cake tin to cover the base well.
- Mix the cinnamon into the apples cubes and lime juice.
- Arrange the apples cubes into the cake mixture in the tin.
- Sprinkle two thirds of the raisins on top of the apples.
- Smooth the remaining cake mixture over the raisins and apples.
- Scatter the remaining raisins on top of the mixture.
- Bake in the oven for 1 hour.
- Cool in the tin for 15 minutes and then turn the cake out to serve as slices, cake fingers or squares.
- Store in an airtight container. The flavours of the lime and apples will mature with plump raisins to give a moist Windfall Apple Cake.
With the apple season celebrations in many areas in October, Windfall Apple Cake and its apple cake inspirations is a recipe to bake this month. Windfall Apples can be used to bake a tasty wholemeal loaf.
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