I don’t think I’ve ever thought about food quite as much as I’m doing at the moment. I’m sure we’re all a bit like that, what with the combination of more time on our hands and limited opportunities for stocking up, but as someone who’s been known to list food as a hobby before now I didn’t think it could ever feature much larger in my life. If I’m not thinking about what to make for tonights dinner, I’m already onto planning tomorrows. If I’m not not checking store cupboards and shelves, I’m mentally writing the next shopping list.
Hunting through cookbooks for recipes was always an integral part of Sunday morning and the current situation hasn’t changed that. Yesterday I found a cake that is perfect for these times. It’s quick and undemanding on the store cupboard shelves and most importantly it can be quite easily switched around to make use of what you have to hand.
The recipe is from Ruby Tandoh’s Flavour-Eat-What-You-Love .If Ruby’s name sounds familiar it’s because she was a Bake Off finalist back in 2013 and also a Guardian food columnist for a few years. If you’ve never tried her recipes before there’s a selection here and they’re well worth investigating best-baking-recipes-from-ruby-tandoh. I’ve baked most of these at some point or other and particularly recommend the rye, vanilla & poppy seed bread.
Mention of Bake Off has just made me realise that it will probably be another of the coronavirus victims. It doesn’t air on TV until later in the year but the recordings normally start around now. I predict a lot of bakers will have withdrawal symptoms come the autumn if it doesn’t happen. I suppose we could always have our own competition and share bakes here.
If you’re in need of of some comfort baking today the recipe for Ruby’s soft spiced apple cake is below. The ingredients list may look long but think of it as a best case scenario for if you had all of the spices available. As Ruby says in her book you can cut the spices down to just 3 teaspoons of mixed spice and miss everything else out if you want. The end result will still be a good cake.
Ingredients
- 150g unsalted butter
- 150g soft light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 75g plain flour
- 75g wholemeal flour
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 1tsp ground cinnamon
- 1tsp ground ginger
- 3 cardamom pods, seeds only, crushed
- 0.5tsp ground coriander
- 0.25tsp ground white pepper
- 0.25tsp ground nutmeg
- 0.25tsp ground allspice
- pinch of salt
- 2 apples peeled, cored and diced. Ideally Braeburn or Cox but anything you have to hand should work.
- 1tbsp demerara sugar
Method
- Heat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a 20cm round cake tin.
- Beat together the butter and light brown sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, continue beating after each egg until fully combined.
- Add all of the dry ingredients except for the diced apple and stir until smooth.
- Fold 75% of the diced apple into the batter.
- Spoon the batter into the tin and smooth it out. Scatter the remaining 25% of diced apple on top and gently press it in. Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top.
- Bake the cake for 35 to 45 minutes. If the cake is ready a knife or skewer poked into the middle of it should come out clean.
David in the kitchen. 