Apple and Marzipan Cake. Gluttony.

I had a glut of rather fluffy tasting apples staring at me from the fruit bowl this week.  Not one to relish a velvet-y apple I decided to hide them in a cake.  This is a fabulous recipe: you just chuck most of the ingredients in a bowl, stir, add the apples, top with marzipan and pop in the oven.  The hubbie said it was one of my best cakes ever which, given that it's not chocolate, must mean it's pretty tasty.

I had some left over streusal topping from my raisin, bran and carrot muffins recipe lying around so I tipped the whole lot over the top of the cake before baking.  The streusal was the icing on the cake of deliciousness.  But if you can’t be bothered to dirty another bowl, I completely understand.  Simple recipes are my absolute favourite especially as they give kitchen organisation a chance (most of the time I’m busy trying to find the camera under tea towels, piles of flour and scraps of newspaper with the week’s recipes scribbled down…I like to call it creative chaos).   

The cake is delicious served warm with a dollop of thick cream and a steaming cup of English breakfast tea.

Ingredients

425 g eating apples (about 4)

500 g self raising flour

zest of 2 lemons

2 tsp baking powder

250 g light brown sugar

200 g dark muscovado sugar

200 g unsalted butter, softened

5 free range eggs

100 g marzipan, torn into chunks

Method

1. Heat the oven to 160C and butter and base line a 23 cm round, loose bottomed, cake tin.

2. Mix all the ingredients, bar the apples and marzipan, in a big bowl and stir well until completely combined.

3. Peel, core and chop the apples into smallish chunks and add to the mixture.

4. Spoon the whole lot into the prepared tin and sprinkle over the streusal topping if you’re keen but def the marzipan.

5. Pop in the oven for 1 hour 40 mins resting some tin foil over the top after an hour to prevent it burning.  As my oven is pretty basic, heated by an uncovered element on the base of the oven and is seriously tiny I put the tin on a baking tray to prevent the bottom burning.  Do the same if you’re equally challenged.  The cake is done when well-risen, golden brown, starting to come away from the edges and there is no perceivable wobble.  Allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before removing to cool on a wire rack.

So much better than a furry apple.