COOKBOOKS GALORE

My son and family were coming at last, and I wanted to make a cake. My daughter in law loves ginger, so I found this great recipe on the BBC Good Food site. ://www.bbcgoodfood.com/search/recipes?query=Squidgy+Lemon+Ginger+Cake It's a lovely cake, easy to make, and the fresh ginger cuts through the sticky sweetness of the sugar and dates. It's a dense and sticky cake with great flavours. I didn't use the suggested candied lemon peel or the coffee crystals to decorate the top. I just used the white chocolate. It's great as a cake, but would also make a great dessert with cream or ice cream [minus the chocolate topping maybe?]

Over the years I've gathered quite a lot of recipes for apple cakes, but I found this one recently in an old magazine cutting. I've made crumble cakes before, but this one has 2 layers of apple, so a bit different. It also has some elderflower cordial in it, which sounded like an interesting addition. The recipe used a 27x25 cake tin, but I only had my Wilton's brownie tin which is 27x17.8 so I made 3/4 of this mixture. Even so, it made a large cake; there was plenty for 6 people and some left over for us. This is the original recipe. Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease and line a 27x25xm baking tin. Cream together 200g butter or margarine and 200g caster sugar. Add 4 eggs one at a time and beat together. Add 350g sr flour, 2 tspn mixed spice and 1 tbspn elderflower cordial and fold in. Put half of this batter in the tin. Peel and thinly slice 500g cooking apples [about 2 large ones] and put half over the mixture in the tin. Spoon over the rest of the mixture making ...

It was the big family get together for my in laws on Saturday. As there are now too many for my sil's house, she hired her church halls. We ate fish and chips as there was a chippie round the corner, and each branch of the family made a dessert or two. I bought rather a lot of apples last week, so decided to make a recipe which my lovely German dil had given me, for a Bavarian apple cake. It's nice to have a new recipe using apples, and this one is really delicious and easy to make. The cake is in layers - a cakey layer, then jam, then a cheesecake type layer, then apples and finally almonds. It does use a fair amount of sugar, 200g, so I used Bramley apples, but any tart apples would do. Preheat oven 220C/gas8 Grease the sides of a  20cm springform cake tin, but line the bottom with foil to prevent any mixture seeping out. Dil advised this as she's had a problem with a leaking cake! Cream 125g butter with 75g caster sugar and 1/2 tspn vanilla extract. Add 150g plai...

I've mentioned my lovely German dil before, and this is one of her family recipes. I bought some Bramleys in a local market, and wanted to make some kind of dessert with them. I love apple cakes and have quite a lot of recipes for them, but this is a bit different in the way you put it together. You get a layer of cake, then a layer of apples, sultanas, cinnamon and citrus zest, then another cake layer. The cake mixture is more like a dough than the normal cake batter, and I found it difficult to spread the second layer over the fruit. It was quite stiff and I kept getting lumps of dough. I spread it as well as I could, but there were some sultanas poking through [unlike my dil's version, where there's not a sultana in sight - well she works in catering!]. Not a very pretty plate - I asked my OH to get a nice plate for me to put it on, and this is what he produced! It can be a dessert or eaten as a cake for afternoon tea. We ate it warm with some ice cream. I...

I'm always looking for new ways to use apples, and I found this recipe on Mary Berry's site. She calls it 'The very best Apple Dessert Cake'.  It's a sponge cake mixture with an added tspn of almond extract, and you put half of the mixture in the bottom of a 20cm springform or loose bottomed cake tin, lined, then you put a layer of thickly sliced apples then the rest of the cake mixture. You sprinkle the top with flaked almonds and bake for about 45 mins. You'll find the recipe  here  . It's got a great almond flavour and a lovely moist sponge; I like the contrast between the cake and the apple layer, then the crunch of the almonds on top. We ate ours with some creme fraiche. I liked it cold, but my OH preferred it warm.

Recently it was Bramley Apple week, so I decided to make an apple cake, and found this WI recipe amongst my mil's collection, but to be honest, for me, it doesn't really live up to its name. It needs a stronger toffee flavour, but I liked the idea of enhancing the apple flavour by using Calvados. We love apple cakes, and I have lots of recipes, but this is the first toffee apple cake I've tried. I had a look online and there are lots of different ideas  - I liked   this one  from Rosie Bakes It blog, but there seems to be a bit too much topping for me and she adds dates, just as I did for my Sticky Toffee cake, and I didn't want to use dates - I want the toffee flavour to come from something else. Another idea was to put some Carnation Caramel in the cake mixture -  this recipe  uses it, one from the Good to Know site. 225g self-raising flour 150g soft butter 150g soft dark brown sugar 50g  mixed nuts, chopped 1 large Bramley cooking apple, peeled,...

Yet another apple recipe!  Am making the most of the Bramleys before we leave. This is a nice easy recipe that you can make in a few minutes, if you need a cake in a hurry. It's another one from Mum's old handwritten book. 4oz/125g sr flour and 4oz/125g sr wholemeal flour 1 tspn baking powder 2oz/60g soft brown or demerara sugar 11/2 oz/45g diced butter or margarine 1 tspn cinnamon 1 medium Bramley apple [about 10oz/300g before peeling] peeled, cored and chopped 3-4 tbspn milk extra demerara sugar for the top Preheat oven 200C/gas6/400F Grease a baking sheet. Sift the flours into a bowl and rub in the fat. Stir in the sugar and cinnamon and then add the chopped apple. You can, if you like, grate the apple, but I prefer it in chunks. Mix it all together then stir in enough milk to make a soft dough. Turn onto a floured board and shape into a 7"/ about 18cm round. Mark it into 8 and then sprinkle the top with denerara sugar. Bake it for about 25-30 m...

Yes, another apple cake! The apples are falling off the Bramley trees as there are so many of them, and it's been so hot. I found this recipe in one of my Mum's old cookbooks. It was called a 'crunchy' topped cake, but it's not at all crunchy on top. It's not a spongecake base this time - more of a sweet pastry. 75g butter or margarine 175g sr flour 50g caster sugar 1 egg 75ml water 3 apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges topping 75g dark brown sugar 2 tspn cinnamon 25g butter of margarine Preheat oven to 180C/gas4/350F Grease and line a 20cm cake tin. Rub fat into flour till it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and mix in the egg and water to make a soft dough. Spread this dough into the base of the tin. Press the apple wedges into the dough and sprinkle with the sugar and cinnamon. Dot with pieces of butter of margarine. Bake for about 30 mins till firm. It's difficult to decide of the base is cooked as the...

When we came to France nearly 7 years ago, we brought 2 Bramley apple trees with us, as the variety isn't known here. They've been prolific and have given us apples for the freezer every year. I'm always looking for new recipes to use them and found this one in an old exercise book that I used in a cookery evening class in the 70s. 100g soft margarine or butter 100g caster sugar 1 tspn vanilla extract 2 eggs beaten 150g sr flour milk if needed 350g apples, peeled, cored and sliced [and defrosted if frozen] topping 75g hard margarine [I used soft] 100g sr flour 75g caster sugar 1 tbspn water Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas 4 Make the cake first by creaming the fat and sugar till light and fluffy then beating in the vanilla and eggs. Fold flour into the mixture and if necessary add a little milk to make a stiffish dropping consistency. Grease a 21cm loose-bottomed tin and line base with parchment. Put cake mixture into tin and smooth top, then put the apple o...

Still more windfalls from the garden, so have tried another apple cake recipe. This time it's from Rachel Allen's book 'Rache's favourite food at home'. I like her style very much; it's straightforward and makes you feel you can achieve what she's done. Here's the recipe: 225g plain flour 1/2 tspn baking powder 100g butter - room temperature 100g sugar, plus 2 tbspn 1 beaten egg 100ml milk 1 large cooking apple, about 300g, cored, peeled and diced 1 tspn cinnamon Preheat oven to 180C/gas4/350F Grease a 25cm ovenproof plate [I used a tin plate belonging to my mum] Mix flour and baking powder in a bowl and rub in the butter till it looks like breadcrumbs. Add sugar, beaten egg and enough milk to make a soft dough - it will be wet. Then pat half of the dough into the bottom of the plate. Put the apple onto the dough and sprinkle with 1 tspn of sugar and the cinnamon. Spoon the rest of the dough on the top, covering the apple. Sprinkl...

We have a lot of windfall Bramleys to use up, so I made this apple cake. The recipe is from Sue L, a lovely lady on the bbc food forum. This is her blog - http://www.mainlybaking.blogspot.com/  . It's good as a cake and also great as a pudd. with ice cream or cream. The recipe: 250g butter or margarine 300g sr flour 1 beaten egg 350g apples - peeled, cored and sliced 150g caster sugar 1/2 tspn cinnamon 1/2 tspn mixed spice 1 tbspn brown sugar Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F Grease a 20cm cake tin. Melt fat in the microwave in a large bowl. Stir in the beaten egg and caster sugar. Gradually stir in the flour. The dough should be like cookie dough. Spread half the dough into the bottom of the cake tin.Use fingers to spread it evenly. Mix the apples with the spices and arrange in an even layer on top of the dough. Cover with the rest of the dough, again using fingers to spread it out.Sprinkle top with the brown sugar. Bake for about an hour, or till golden. Leave ...