Monday 22 March 2010

Apple & blueberry cake

A lovely moist, sweet cake for afternoon tea




I got a fantastic cookbook from the Good Housekeeping range with a beautiful array of sweet recipes to try. This is my first baking effort from the book and it turned out wonderfully; the cake was almost better the next day rather than going stale. Be warned that the dough takes quite a bit of work to pack around the fruit as it is frightfully sticky, but keep flouring your hands as you work and it gets a lot easier.

Ingredients:

- 4 oz butter, chilled and diced
- 8 oz self-raising flour, sifted
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 6 oz granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced
- A punnet of blueberries

Method:

- Preheat the oven to 160 degrees (fan oven), then line and grease an 8 inch baking tin.
- Put the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl, add the diced butter and rub it into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Add 4.5 oz of the sugar with the beaten eggs and stir well until it comes together into a sticky dough.
- Using well-floured hands, take half the mixture and press it into the base of the baking tin.
- Layer the sliced apples and blueberries evenly over the surface, setting aside a few blueberries for the top of the cake.
- Sprinkle the fruit layer with the remaining 1.5 oz sugar then press the remaining dough (again with well-floured hands) over the top.
- Add the remaining blueberries and push them down slightly into the cake.
- Bake for 40 minutes until the cake has risen and is firm to the touch; a skewer should come out clean.
- Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

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