I hope it’s still correct to say apples are in season, because it’s already a couple of weeks since I made this apple cake with autumn in mind and only now am I getting round to writing about it.  On the other hand, it’s not exactly a seasonal cake because we all cook with apples throughout the year and to make this cake I bought Bramley apples from the supermarket.

Regular readers will remember that I like making apple cakes and prefer them to pies and crumbles, partly because they work both as puddings (with whipped cream, say) and as teatime cakes.

You can’t have two many apple cake recipes in your repertoire, in my view, and I’m happy to add this Delia recipe to mine.  The lazy baker in me particularly appreciated the fact that peeling the Bramleys is optional.  That was a no brainer: I didn’t peel them.

To make the job even simpler I used the all-in-one method to mix all the ingredients together before folding in the apples and orange zest.

Ingredients

• 225g self-raising flour
• 1 rounded teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 3 Bramley apples
• 175g soft light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 75g butter, softened
• Grated zest of an orange
• 1 tbsp milk (if needed)
• A little icing sugar

Method

• Conventional oven: pre-heat to 180ºC
• Grease and base-line a 20cm loose bottomed cake tin
• Sift the flour, baking powder and spices into your mixing bowl and add the butter, sugar and eggs
• Beat until thoroughly blended.  I used my KitchenAid.  You could use an electric hand whisk
• Chop the apples into small dice (with or without peel, remember) and fold into the mixture with the orange zest.  Add a little milk if the mixture seems dry
• Spoon the mixture into your prepared tin
• Bake in the baking oven of your Aga (or in the centre of a conventional oven at 180ºC) for about 1 hour, but do check on it every 10 minutes or so after the first half hour.  I put a piece of greaseproof paper loosely on top at this point because my cake was looking a little dark
• The cake is done when it feels springy to touch and is starting to shrink away from the sides of the tin
• Cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so before turning out onto a rack
• Sprinkle with icing sugar to serve