Winter Collection: Afternoon Apple Cake

Serves 6 - 8
150g golden caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
150g butter, room temperature, pus extra for dotting
2 large eggs, beaten
250g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground mixed spices
2 Bramley apples
100g small sultanas

Preheat the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4. Grease and line the base of a 1kg loaf tin.

Whisk together the butter and sugar until creamy then beat in the eggs, flour, baking powder and spices – it’s quite a stiff mixture.

Peel the apples and dice one and half of them. Thinly slice the remaining half. Stir the diced apple and sultanas into the cake mix then spoon into the tin. Smooth the surface them arrange the apple slices on top. Dot with butter, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 50 – 60 minutes – turn the oven down a bit if it starts to get too dark.

Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

*Rallies A Little*

The Apples: Debil's Dream (Freestyle Records, 2008)
The Apples are a 9-piece jazz-funk band from Israel. This is a great, great record. You can - ahem - source more of their stuff here...

Classic Apple and Blackberry Crumble

Serves 6
Knob of butter
2 Bramley cooking apples, peeled, cored and cubed
4 eating apples, peeled, cored and cubed
1 vanilla pod, split
200g fresh or frozen blackberries
2 tbsp caster sugar
For the crumble
100g unsalted butter, finely diced
100g plain flour
100g Demerara or light muscovado sugar
3 tbsp porridge oats
100g pecans, roughly chopped
custard or ice cream, to serve

1 Preheat the oven to 180°C / gas 4. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the apples, vanilla pod and a splash of water. Cook over a high heat for 5-8 minutes until softened.

2 Stir in the blackberries and the sugar. Cook for 2 minutes until the sugar has dissolved, then tip into a pie dish.

3 For the crumble rub the butter into the flour then stir in the sugar, oats and pecans. Scatter over the fruit and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.

Crab Apple Jelly

My brother gave me a load of organic crab apples and greengages from the trees in his garden yesterday so I had a go at making jelly. It was a grey, drizzly day but the smell of apples bubbling away on the stove and finally, the sight of my row of crystal-clear, ruby-red jars lined up on the kitchen counter really lifted my spirits. Though simple, as usual, it took longer than I thought it would and Scrap soon grew bored of picking off the leaves deciding that "apple jam is yuk" and instead settled down in the lounge in front of this week's favourite film Herbie - The Love Bug, regularly summoning me by yelling "it's tum off!!" at the top of his voice every time there was an ad break.

Crab apples contain so much pectin that unless you really add too much water, the jelly will always set and you'll have something delicious to show for your efforts. Tomorrow I'm going to have a go at greengage jam (or maybe chutney).

Wash the crab apples well, removing the leaves and stalks. Place in a large pan and just cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer on the lowest heat for one hour until the apples are very, very soft. Line a large sieve or colander with a muslin cloth and tip in the mixture. Leave the liquid to drip through for a couple of hours - if you push it with a wooden spoon, you will get more out but the finished jelly will be cloudy. Measure the apple liquid and pour into a very large clean pan. Add roughly three quarters of the same volume of granulated sugar ( I had 2.5 litres liquid, added 1.8 litres sugar and got 9 jars of jelly) and gently bring to the boil, stirring from time to time until the sugar has completely dissolved. Boil hard for 10 minutes then cool a little, pour into jars and seal.