Vanilla Apple Sponge

 

Although a frequent baker, I wonder if I am the only one with a slight fear of making big cakes? I will make all kinds of small cakes and biscuits without a second thought but the idea of making a big cake always seems a little daunting and more likely to end in disaster than a batch of cupcakes! This is a fear I need to get over, and the only way to do this is by practice!

First up – a vanilla apple sponge cake from an old edition of BBC’s Good Food Magazine (October 2008). I have so many of these magazines and have only made a couple of recipes from each one, so I am working my way back through them now, rediscovering all the things I meant to make but somehow didn’t quite get around to.

To make the cake you will need:

• 250g unsalted butter (plus extra for greasing)
• 250g golden caster sugar
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 250g self-raising flour
• 1 vanilla pod, split, with the seeds removed and reserved
• 3 small Bramley apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
• 2 tbsp demerara sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Start by creaming the butter and caster sugar together, before mixing in the beaten eggs, flour, and vanilla seeds. Tip this mix into a tin (20cm ish greased round the sides with the base lined with baking paper), and lay the apple wedges on the top, poking them into the mix. I baked the cake in a flexible square mould rather than a round springform tin, but I think I need to invest in a round tin as round cakes look prettier!

Sprinkle the top with the demerara sugar and cinnamon, and bake in a preheated oven (180 degrees reduced to 160 if you have a fan oven) for about 1 hr 5 mins.

Success! It wasn’t burnt, it didn’t sink and it looked delicious! When cooled we had some with vanilla ice cream and decided it tasted even better than it looked! The only change I made to the recipe was that I used more than the suggested amount of cinnamon because I love it – I think a good 1/2 tsp was about right.