Verdict: Honey loaf cake

Not good. It was dry, bland and unspectacular. I brought mascarpone for it, and it would have been excessively dry without it. You could taste the honey in the cake - but only just. It needed far more honey - and the mascarpone really could have done with being sweetened with honey too. Oh well, you win some, you lose some...

Honey Cake

I'm going to Ellie's for dinner tonight and I said I'd bring dessert. I'm feeling rather uninspired at the moment, so it's just going to be a very simple, but hopefully tasty, honey loaf cake. The recipe is from here.

Honey Loaf Cake
Ingredients

• 100g Butter
• 175g Honey
• 2 Eggs
• 300g Plain flour
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 75ml Milk

Method

1. Cream the butter and then beat in the honey.
2. Beat in the eggs.
3. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and fold in.
4. Add the milk and combine gently.
5. Pour into a greased loaf tin and bake at ~200C for ~45-55 mins until golden.
6. Turn out onto a wire rack and brush with honey before allowing to cool.

Looking at the batter, I don't think I added quite enough milk. It's hard to tell, but the cake mix was a little on the firm side. I don't think it'll make too much difference though. Here's the cake ready for the oven.Here's the cake straight from the oven. I think it's a little dry, possibly due to not having added enough milk, but looks edible. I think it looks pretty good though.But the honey glaze just finishes it off beautifully!

Verdict: Jewish apple cake

Put quite simply, it's a good cake. The sponge is nice and moist, a little on the dense side, but not too bad. The chunks of apple are absolutely gorgeous, slightly tart still, but with a wonderful texture. Like most apple cakes, it's screaming out for custard or ice cream - unusually, for this particular cake I think I'd go with vanilla ice cream actually. The sweetness is about right for me, which means it's probably not quite sweet enough for most people - but that'd be fixed by the ice cream I think. The cinnamon is a bit too faint in my opinion, and perhaps a tiny little bit of nutmeg would have been good, but overall it's a pretty darned good cake. It's not going to win any awards, but this cake'll go down well with anyone!

A plan comes together

Some days, everything just works out quite neatly. I found myself at a bit of a loose end today, and as often happens when that (rather unusual) occurence happens, I decided that I felt like baking something. I needed to go buy some apples too, and M&S happened to have a special offer that meant I ended up buying rather a lot more than I had initially intended to. And luckily, a couple of weeks ago, I came across a recipe for an apple cake that looked rather good - so this seemed like just the perfect opportunity! The recipe is from here, and is pretty much just anglicised and scaled down slightly...

Jewish Apple Cake
Ingredients

• 4 Small apples
• 2 1/2tsp Ground cinnamon
• 4tbsp Caster sugar
• 1tsp Lemon juice
• 175ml Sunflower oil
• 285g Caster sugar
• 4tbsp Orange juice
• 2tsp Vanilla extract
• 200g Plain flour
• 2 1/2 tsp Baking powder
• 3 Eggs
  

Method

1. Dice the apples into ~1cm cubes, discarding the cores.
2. Toss the apple chunks with the cinnamon, caster sugar and lemon juice.
3. Whisk the oil, caster sugar, orange juice and vanilla extract together.
4. Gradually fold in the flour and baking powder.
5. Beat the eggs and fold in gradually.
6. Pour half the batter into a lined cake tin and cover with half of the apple chunks. Pour the remaining batter over the top and cover with the remaining apples.
7. Bake at ~180C for ~1 hour until cooked through.

Four small apples is actually quite a bit more apple than I had thought. Here's how much I used.And the cake just ready for the oven. If only you could smell how good this smells!Here's the cake straight from the oven.What's that you say? Burned? Yup, as ever. Stupid bloody college ovens. Still looks good though!