My cooking apples have come to an end but there are still plenty of sweet, late desert apples to be picked. The best are the Tydeman’s Late Orange. I have discovered a whole rich seam of recipes using desert apples which sound delicious. They start with pancakes and end with dinner party cakes. It all began when I was given a recipe by Nikki, my yoga teacher, who had, in turn, been given it by her daughter’s Croatian mother in law. I then remembered the book of Anna Del Conte’s favourite recipes which even has ‘apple cake’ its title.
The main differences in these two recipes is that Anna Del Conte uses olive oil instead of butter and ricotta and includes sultanas. It is also a larger cake. I started with the Apple and Ricotta recipe which was delightfully quirky, mixing imperial, metric and American measures with little instruction; so there has been a degree of translation but I somehow knew the recipe came from the heart and would be more than good. I didn’t include the lemon zest as I gave the cake a good sprinkling of cinnamon but will another time. I am certain to be making this cake again. As the apples were sweet, I was also light on the amount of sugar used.
100g butter, at room temperature
60 – 100g caster sugar
400g ricotta
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 lemon, zested rind only (optional)
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g self-raising flour
2-3 apples, cored, peeled and cut into small cubes
topppings
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp flaked almonds
Maple syrup (optional)
Oven at 180°C
Grease a 20cm springform cake tin
In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until pale and light. By degrees add all the other ingredients to the bowl. Sieving the flour and bicarbonate of soda and leaving the apple cubes to the end. Mix well and turn into the cake tin. Lightly level the top of the cake and sprinkle with cinnamon, flaked almonds and a little maple syrup if you choose (you may even want to put on some thin slivers of apple too).
Bake for about 45 minutes or more until a skewer inserted well into the middle of the cake comes out dry.
Serve at room temperature.
