French Apple Cake

This cake is more fruit than cake and the batter’s job is to lend that lovely buttery rum flavour and hold all the fruit together. It’s simplistic and unlike the usual American recipes with apples that always include cinnamon, this has none of that. However, this cake is one for easy eating and can be paired with yogurt, crème fraîche, chantilly cream, a scoop of ice-cream or eaten alone.

Some tips:
– Add a variety of apples in it, so that the flavour is made more interesting.
– If you are not big on rum, try substituting for Armagnac, Calvados or a simple Cognac.
– As this cake has a lot of apples, please put it in the fridge and warm it up in the oven or your microwave before eating. It tastes better warm.

Ingredients:
3 apples (cored, skinned and diced around 1cm cubes)
1 tsp salt (for soaking apples in to prevent discolouration)
2 eggs (room temp)
150g white caster sugar
zest of 1 lemon
3 TBSP Dark Rum
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
100g All purpose flour
15g Almond meal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
115g butter (melted and cooled to room temp)

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 180 degC fan forced, with the rack in the middle of the oven.
• Butter a 20cm springform cake tin.

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• Fill a big bowl with water and add in 1 tsp of salt, add the diced apples into it. Soak it for at least 5 mins. Drain the water by pouring the apples and water into a sieve. (items in blue)

• Add the zest of lemon to the caster sugar. (items in green)
• Whisk together or use a spoon to aerate the items in red together.

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• Whisk or using a hand mixer, beat the eggs in a big bowl till it becomes foamy like above.

• Add the sugar mixture into the eggs in stages and mixing after every addition. Till it becomes a lighter shade of yellow.

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• Add in rum and vanilla extract (items in purple) into the egg mixture, mix to incorporate. It should look like the last photo above.

• Whisk/mix in the flour in 3 parts and the butter in 2 parts, alternately into the batter. If you are using a mixer, be light handed when incorporating the flour in.

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• Pour in the diced apples and using a spatula, fold it in. Make sure the apples are coated.

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• Scrape the mixture into the prepared cake tin and put it into the oven to bake. It will take around 50mins to 1hour to bake. When it is ready, it will be golden brown on top and the skewer will come out clean in the middle.

• Cool the cake then cut and serve slightly warm if eating immediately.