bristol apple cider cake

I think I’m catching a baking bug – but it’s a fruit-inspired baking bug, so that’s okay, right? RIGHT?? I hope so anyway.

Now that apples from this side of the world are available (i.e. not South Africa), I’m ready to jump on the apple bandwagon, especially since a friend of mine brought some apples back from her family's garden in Bristol. Not pies, not crumble, not cobbler – I’m into cake. A spiced cake, I thought, and one with cider. So I took to the internet and found some potential starting points:

-This Epi recipe sounded really good, until I realised that I’d forgotten that when American recipes say cider, they mean non-alcoholic cider. Well, I’d already bought the “hard” cider in, so I headed across the internet pond back to the BBC website…

-where I found this recipe from Simon Rimmer, the sweet little bald Mancunian chef who now’s on Something from the Weekend. I liked this one a lot – though I have no need for the cinnamon mascarpone (though it does sound lovely). Actually, as I’ve gotten older I’ve increasingly steered away from icings in favour of the cake, though I remember the days of being six when I’d only eat the icing…

Anyway, I reduced the amount of flour, sugar and butter by 1/6 (not quite confident yet at baking to mess with measurements too much), cut the amount of sultanas/raisins by 3/4 (not so keen) and dropped pecans from the recipe completely (unnecessary, in my opinion).

The result? A yummy, delicately spiced cake with loads of flavour. The whole cake (8 in x 8 in) makes about 9 pieces of cake, which are about 300 calories each.