Our apple crop is far from spectacular this year, so we will just have to make the most of those few we do have. No frozen juice or gleaming jars of chutney this year. I began collecting apple recipes ever since our first autumn here when I realised our four trees would present us with a harvest far beyond the scope of the tabletop fruit bowl. Some English counties seem to each have their own apple cake recipe but so far a Hampshire recipe has not come my way so I am going to presume the title for my cake, as it was made in Hampshire from apples which, so far as I know, may well be unique to this county. (see below)
Hampshire Apple Cake.
You will need:
- About 250g of dessert apples
- 125g unsalted butter
- 150g caster sugar (plus extra for the topping)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 lemon
- 3 medium eggs
- 1 rounded teaspoon baking powder
- 3 tablespoons milk
- ground cinnamon
(Please note that if, like me, you use the ingredients shot as a visual larder checklist that the lemon, baking powder, and milk are not included in this shot!)
Tin Size: 23cm Oven Temperature: 180C, gas mark 4.
What you need to do:
- Preheat the oven.
- Prepare the tin and plan the cake's escape route. Cakes with a baked on topping are best lifted out of the tin rather than turned out. Either use a spring-form tin or else put a band of folded baking parchment across the base leaving long enough ends to be able to lift the cake out. Either way grease the tin and dust lightly with plain flour.
- Zest and juice the lemon.
- Cream the butter and the 150g castor sugar. Add the vanilla and lemon zest.
- Reserve about half of one of the egg whites in a dish at this stage, and beat in the rest of the eggs.
- Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold into the mixture. Then add the milk. Mix completely and set aside for ten minutes while you attend to the topping.
- Peel, core and slice the apples. Sprinkle with a little lemon juice to stop browning and set aside.
- Lightly whisk the reserved egg white.
- On a plate, mix together approx 50g caster sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon. I also add a little extra vanilla kick here with some powdered vanilla I found in an Asian supermarket but it is not essential.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared tin. Then dunk the apple slices in the egg white, then in the spiced sugar and arrange them overlapping on the top of the cake. The egg white helps the sugar stick to the apple and adds a little crispness to the topping.
- Bake on the middle shelf for 50-60 minutes, until firm to the touch. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before lifting it out of the tin to cool on a rack.
Anyone who has been in a kitchen where apples are being cooked with cinnamon will know the smell is wonderful; layer in the elements of vanilla and lemon zest and it becomes heavenly. If you are making this for guests, bake it just before they arrive. It would almost be mean, wouldn't it, not to share the full olfactory experience and like most apple cakes it is so good served warm. Should you feel that some dairy unctuousness would not go amiss then by all means slip some creme fraiche or vanilla ice-cream on the side.
This is a good accompaniment to tea or coffee. It gives a good cake to fruit ratio. It is not however, one of those currently fashionable high-rise multilayer cakes, so tall that "if you slice me, I will have to lie down on the plate" but, to my mind, that is not necessarily a bad thing.
As for the apples I have used, we call them Our Own apples, not that the fruit from the Katy, James Grieves and Cox's Orange Pippin trees in our back garden has been scrumped, you understand; we simply haven't been able to work out just what variety they are. The tree was well established here when we moved in, leaning companionably over the front fence. Since there had been an apple orchard on the land across the road it could well be a seedling. It has a pretty, flecked reddish skin with a fine russet overlay. The flesh is firm, white and juicy with a deliciously distinctive flavour. It is very early, usually ready to drop from the tree during the third week of August and like most early apples doesn't keep for very long. They make the most refreshing juice and most people who have tasted them are very enthusiastic. A great accompaniment to cheese.
Trying to work out just what they might be, I have gone to various Apple Day events but have tasted none quite like these. I started with
Blackmoor Open Day. Later I tried the
Apple Affair event at West Dean and then visited
Brogdale Hall and
RHS Wisley. All of them are well worth a visit if you are considering growing apples or even if you simply like eating them - lots of great advice and fantastic tasting opportunities and recipes. The apple identifying experts I asked suggested either
Ross Non-pareil but that is a later variety, or
St Edmund's Russet which comes closest but the flavour isn't quite the same. Perhaps it has St Edmund's Russet in its parentage.
Not knowing what I would replace the tree with should disaster strike, I decided that propagating 'an heir and a spare' might be a good idea. I don't have the grafting skills for this but in early 2000 I found someone who did, Mr House at
Family Trees Nursery. I took him some pencil-thick wood and he grafted two onto dwarf root stocks which are now well on their way to being good producers - weather and my rather suspect pruning skills permitting.
So my visits didn't come up with a convincing answer but I am grateful for the quest. I would thoroughly recommend going to any of the heritage orchards and places I have mentioned and checking out local Apple Day events. Consider growing something you will never find in a supermarket. Having the chance to pick and eat even a few apples from your own tub-grown tree is enough to bring out the Eve in all of us.
I have reined in my quest to know just exactly what they are now; in truth I would rather think that they are indeed simply Our Own.
