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 almond crumble squares

Much as I love summer, autumn can also be a fantastic season: beautiful colours and lots of fantastic autumnal fruit ready to be harvested. For me, one of autumn’s greatest pleasures is blackberrying: it’s something that we did as a family, scrambling around the cliffs of Guernsey, eating more blackberries than actually made it into the tubs!  This year seems to have been a bumper year for blackberries and so EHH and I spent a fab afternoon on the outskirts of Bath, clambering into the middle of bramble bushes in search of big juicy berries.

We returned home with a good haul of blackberries and so the next decision was what to make with them! Blackberry and apple crumble was an absolute must but I also fancied making a cake. I’ve made a few crumble cakes recently (rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake; raspberry and apple crumble squares) but wanted to make something new. I was planning to visit a friend who has just had a baby so the oats in this Good Food recipe seemed like a good idea.

The original recipe was blackberry and coconut but I’m generally not sure about dessicated coconut in a cake as it can be rather dry, so I decided to substitute the coconut with ground almonds. I also upped the quantity of oats (and lowered the flour accordingly) and added the additional grated marzipan (this gives fantastic crunch and sweetness to the crumble topping) and chopped hazelnuts (just because I love the nutty flavour and crunchy texture that these add).

This cake was simple to make but I was a little worried that the mix that went in the oven was rather dry and not at all like a typical cake! Don’t be concerned by this – it works out just fine! Judging when the cake is cooked is probably the trickiest part: the crumble topping means that you can’t test the springy-ness of the cake. You will need to test the cake with a metal skewer: the cake will be cooked when the skewer comes out clean, with no sticky cake mixture attached. Make sure that you test in several parts of the cake. On this occasion, I forgot to use my magi-cake strips, which meant that the cake was slightly over-baked at the edge – must remember these next time!

This isn’t a light and fluffy cake: the texture is something between a cake and a flapjack; it's possible that this is due to the addition of ground almonds rather than coconut. The blackberries add a nice sharp flavour contract to the oatiness of the cake. These cakes aren’t particularly sweet – they’d actually work quite well as a tasty and filling oaty breakfast snack. It would work well as a dessert with custard and some more berries, or if I were to serve for afternoon tea, it would be nice served with clotted cream and berries. On the day of baking, the crumble topping was fantastic – crunchy and crumbly with lots of flavour. Unfortunately, after a day, it lost most of its crunch as the moisture from the blackberries seeped up into the topping. However, although they weren’t as good as they were on the day due to the loss of the contrast in textures, these cakes did last well for over a week. 

I think if I were to make these again, I’d consider adding more fruit – possibly a couple of sliced Granny Smith apples. Having recently made a fantastic carrot, pistachio and coconut cake, I’ve been swayed in my opinion about dessicated coconut and would like to give it a go in this cake.

Blackberry and almond crumble cake

Ingredients

Cooling on the rack

1. 200g self-raising flour
2. 75g oats
3. 280g soft brown sugar
4. 200g cold butter, cut into pieces
5. 75g ground almonds / desiccated coconut
6. 75g grated marzipan (optional)
7. 30g chopped hazelnuts
8. 2 medium eggs, beaten
9. 350g frozen or fresh blackberries

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C.
2. Line a rectangular brownie tin (31 x 17cm), or a 21cm square tin.
3. Tip the flour, oats and sugar into a large bowl. Rub the butter into the flour mixture using your fingertips until only small pea-size pieces remain.
4. Stir through the coconut/almonds.
5. Fill a teacup with this mixture and set this aside.
6. Stir the eggs into the remaining bowl of mixture and mix until evenly combined.
7. Spread over the bottom of the lined baking tin, smoothing the surface with the back of a spoon
8. Scatter over the blackberries.
9. Scatter over the reserved teacup mixture of crumble.
10. Scatter over the grated marzipan and chopped hazelnuts.
11. Place in oven and bake for 1 hr-1 hr 15 mins until golden and cooked through (if you poke a skewer in, it should come out with moist crumbs but no wet mixture). 
12. Leave to cool, then remove from the tin and cut into squares.