Autumn Winter Spiced Apple Syrup Cake

Cheering Moist Apple Cake with Warming Seasonal Spices for Grey Days

Sep 30, 2009 Shefali Choudhury

This is an easy cake to make and if made in season it is also inexpensive. Soaked in spicy syrup and packed with sweet apple pieces it always gets eaten up quickly

This cake is so easy to make, but the syrup means that it needs a few hours to set in the tin; preferably overnight. So make the cake a day in advance to give it time to steep and for the spices to develop.

The following recipe makes a large cake with about twelve filling slices.

Autumn Winter Spiced Apple Syrup Cake

Ingredients:

  • 250g unsalted butter
  • 350g caster sugar
  • 4 Medium eggs
  • 350g self raising flour
  • 120ml milk
  • 8 apples; choose the most flavorful eating apples available
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 4 whole Cardamoms
  • 1 level tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 level tsp ground cloves
  • Half a level tsp of grated nutmeg
  • 250g icing Sugar
  • 100ml hot Water

Preparation:

  1. Grease a rectangular, flat baking tin and line with baking parchment. The ideal size of the tin is about 20 x 15 cm or thereabouts but this cake is so easy to make that it will fit in to any shallow baking or roasting tin. Leave some of the paper sticking out over the edges as this makes it easy to pull the cake out. Make sure that the paper is also greased well to prevent any sticking. Set this aside.
  2. Heat the oven to gas mark 7 or 220 degrees.
  3. Next prepare the apples by slicing as finely as possible. A mandolin makes this easy, or a mandolin attachment on a food processor. Even better, a Lurch Spiralizer cuts wonderful fine, wide spiral slices extremely quickly. Once the apples are sliced, quickly coat them well with the lemon juice as this will stop them oxidizing and going brown. It also adds a lovely sharp flavor to this sweet cake.

Cake Mix:

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. A wooden spoon is the best way to do this by hand or it can be done with an electric hand mixer.
  2. Add the eggs and beat to form a creamy batter.
  3. Gently fold in the milk and flour with a metal spoon, alternating between the two until a light cake batter is the result.
  4. Quickly fold in half of the apple and spoon mix in to the prepared cake tin, gently guiding it evenly over the base.
  5. Bake cake in the center of the oven, turning the heat down to gas mark 6 or 200 degrees.
  6. Depending on the size of tin and the individual oven, the cake will take 30 - 45 minutes to cook. Although it is large, cooking it in a shallow pan means that it is wide and flat and therefore requires less cooking time than something the shape of a loaf. The cake is done when the top is risen and golden and a sharp knife can be inserted in to the middle of the cake and come away clean. Check a couple of times during cooking. If the top is done too quickly when the middle is still gooey, it is easy to fix a loose piece of baking parchment over the cake to prevent the top from burning.

Spiced Apple Syrup:

Make the syrup while the cake is cooking so that it is bubbling hot when the cake comes out of the oven. The syrup only takes 15 - 20 minutes to make so there is plenty of time to do the washing up as well.

  1. Place the icing sugar and hot water in a pan over a low heat.
  2. When it is melted into a liquid, add the remaining apple and spices and bring to the boil.
  3. Once the syrup is boiling, turn the heat down so that it simmers gently. Stir the mixture fairly frequently and keep an eye on it to make sure that the sugar does not caramelize and burn.
  4. It should continue to simmer safely for 15 minutes or so and will go a slightly golden color.

Steeping the Cake:

Once the cake is done, remove from the oven and immediately spoon over the boiling syrup. Make sure that this absorbs in to all of the cake, not just the edges or the middle. Take a little time to spoon it over evenly, spreading the sugary apple pieces over the surface at the same time. The cardamoms could be removed now or right before serving the cake.

The syrup drenched cake will remain hot for a long time and must be left to soak up all the sugary mixture. Do not try to move it from the tin because it will be very crumbly and most likely fall to pieces if touched.

Leave on a heat proof surface to cool for a minimum of six hours but preferably over night. The cake can be loosely covered until it is absolutely cold, at which time it can be stored in an air tight container.

Once the cake has been steeped overnight and is cold, lift it out from the tin using the spare paper edges.

Cut in to squares and serve.

The copyright of the article Autumn Winter Spiced Apple Syrup Cake in Recipes is owned by Shefali Choudhury. Permission to republish Autumn Winter Spiced Apple Syrup Cake in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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