Caramel Apple Crumble Cake

Bake Number Three for EHH’s birthday! Having been given a carrier bag full of Bramley apples, I’ve been searching out cake recipes using cooking apples. I found this recipe on the Waitrose website and, seeing that EHH loves anything caramelly and we still had loads of apples, it seemed like the perfect thing to bake for his birthday.

I made a few adaptations to the recipe. Firstly, my deep 20cm cake tin was already in use for my carrot cake, so I decided to split the recipe between two sandwich tins and then sandwich the cakes together with a filling. As you can see from the photo, I went rather OTT with the fillings and used pureed apple (that I already had in the fridge), cinnamon buttercream and the remaining Carnation caramel – layering the buttercream, then the apple and then the caramel. This was way too much and it oozed out everywhere! I would recommend that you use one of the fillings, or alternatively, make less of each and put the apple in the middle with a ring of buttercream around the edge!

I also added the crumble topping. The original recipe was simply topped with a tablespoon of Demerara sugar, but I just love crumble cakes and so decided to add this to my version.

As I sent the complete cake into EHH’s work, I didn’t get a taste! However, the comments that came back were very enthusiastic, so I hope that it was nice! Will definitely be giving this one another go soon – possibly with a caramelised nut topping that I have seen in another recipe…

Caramel Apple Crumble Cake

Ingredients:

1. 125g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for buttering
2. 397g can Carnation Caramel
3. 2 medium eggs
4. 225g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 2 tsp baking powder
6. 2 tsp ground cinnamon
7. 300g Bramley apples, peeled, cored and diced
8. 2 tbsp semi-skimmed milk

For the crumble topping

1. 75g plain flour
2. 50g butter
3. 40g chopped nuts (optional)
4. 25g demerara sugar
5. 25g butterscotch pieces

To fill

1. Cinnamon buttercream:
2. 55g butter, at room temperature
3. 30ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature
4. ½ tsp vanilla extract
5. 2 tsp cinnamon
6. 250g icing sugar, sifted

Or

1. 100g Bramley apples (peeled and chopped)
2. 20g soft brown sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C.
2. Lightly grease and base-line two 20cm sandwich tins.
3. Firstly prepare the crumble topping: Sift the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter. Stir through the sugar and nuts and set aside.
4. Place the butter with 225g of the caramel in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until well combined.
5. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
6. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cinnamon and fold together.
7. Gently stir in the apple and the milk.
8. Spoon the cake mix into your cake tins and smooth the top.
9. Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the top of one of the cakes.
10. Bake for 40 minutes - 1 hour, or until risen and springy. You will probably find that the crumble-topped cake will need slightly longer in the oven.
11. Allow to cool slightly and then remove the cake from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

While the cakes are cooling, make up the filling. Either make cinnamon buttercream:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, milk, cinnamon, vanilla extract and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.

Or:

1. Place the apples in a saucepan with a tablespoon of water.
2. Cook gently over a gentle heat until the apples are mushy.
3. Remove from the heat and taste.
4. Add the soft brown sugar to sweeten as desired.

   12. Spread the cake without the crumble with your chosen filling.
   13. Drizzle over the remaining caramel.
   14. Sandwich with the crumble-topped cake. 
   15. Sprinkle the top of the cake with the butterscotch pieces. 

Blackberry and apple crumble

Just a quick post to type up my blackberry and apple crumble recipe. For me, blackberry and apple crumble is an autumn must! Having made blackberry and almond crumble squares with some of our foraged blackberry haul, next on the list was proper crumble. I love the combination of blackberry and apple, and crumble is just so easy to make.

My crumble isn’t actually the traditional flour, butter, sugar combination, I follow a recipe from The Good Granny Cookbook, which uses oats rather than flour in the topping and so is more like a chewy, crunchy flapjack on top – delicious! By cooking the fruit in a saucepan first and then reducing the juices, you intensify the flavour and prevent the top from becoming soggy.  The great thing about crumble is that there really aren’t any rules – I tend to throw in a bit of spice and whatever nuts that I have in the cupboard!

As I was visiting a friend who has just had a baby, I split the crumble into two disposable tin foil containers: one for them and one for us! These are great: you can pop them in the oven to bake and once cool, pop the cover on and put them in the freezer. Then, when you want to eat, just pop them straight back in the oven to re-heat.   

Blackberry and apple crumble

Ingredients

1. 700g mix of Bramley apples (peeled, cored and diced) and blackberries (I used 400g blackberries, 300g apple)
2. 60g soft brown sugar
3. 85g golden syrup
4. 85g butter
5. 175g oats
6. 60g hazelnuts / walnuts
7. 1.5 tsp cinnamon

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 175C.
2. Put the fruit in a saucepan with the sugar and enough water to cover the base of the pan.
3. Cook gently until the fruit are soft and the juices running.
4. Taste to check the sweetness – stir through more sugar if needed.
5. Strain off the juice.
6. Put the fruit into the pie dish / foil containers.
7. Return the juice to the saucepan and boil rapidly until reduced and syrupy.
8. Pour the juice over the fruit.
9. Melt the golden syrup and the butter together (easiest done in a microwave).
10. Mix the oats, nuts and spice into the syrup/butter mixture.
11. Spread the mixture gently over the fruit.
12. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the top is lightly browned.  

Guernsey Gache Melee

So, what on earth is Gache Melee, I can imagine you saying! Pronounced "Gosh mellar", it is a traditional Guernsey apple cake. As is the way with these old family recipes, there seems to be an abundance of different recipes for this cake. Some are very cakey, some more sticky and gooey. The only thing that seems to be the same is that they all contain cooking apples, originate in Guernsey and are very dense.

I’ve no idea where the recipe I used on this occasion came from originally – as with the Crispy Pineapple Bakes, I copied this recipe out of my Nan’s recipe book, which is an amalgam of recipes copied from magazines, handed down through the family, passed on by friends …

I called my mum to ask advice before making this recipe – but she wasn’t a great deal of help! Her advice was that she “just knew when it was right!” Hmm, thanks Mum! So pretty much, this was a case of experiment and see how it turned out! She did, however, warn me that you always had to bake it for much longer than the recipe said – she wasn’t wrong there! The recipe said 30-45 minutes, I baked it for about 2 hours! Although this was possibly slightly long as the edges had begun to go beyond “caramelised”!

The end product was chewy, gooey and caramelly. Tasty, but not quite right in my mind – the edges were overcooked and the middle not quite cooked. Having posted on Facebook about this, I’ve got a couple of different recipes to try – so may give those a go and see if they are more successful.

Gache Melee

Ingredients

1. 2 medium-large cooking apples (peeled, cored and cubed)
2. 120g plain flour
3. 100g butter (at room temperature)
4. 100g soft brown sugar
5. Enough milk to make a firm paste

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 150C and line a brownie tin with baking parchment.
2. Place the cubed apple into a bowl and sprinkle over the flour. Use a knife to stir the flour with the apples.
3. Cut the butter into the bowl so that the butter is evenly distributed amongst the flour and apple.
4. Mix again with the knife, chopping everything together until the butter and apple are well integrated into the flour.
5. Add the brown sugar and stir everything together with a wooden spoon.
6. Mix in enough milk to make everything stick together without becoming runny.
7. Spoon into the prepared tin and place in oven.
8. Bake (for approx. 1 hour 30 minutes) until golden brown.
9. Remove from oven and leave to cool in tin.
10. Once cool, remove from tin and cut into squares.