It seemed like a good day to harvest our cooking apples today – there are high winds forecast for early next week and I didn’t want to end up gathering them up from the ground once they are bashed and bruised. We haven’t got as many as usual this year, but instead they are all a really good size. Presumably there was a windy day or two earlier in the summer that thinned them out for us.
Mr McGregor has previously had some tree-related incidents so he is only permitted to climb the apple tree supervised….
We’ve had quite a few butterflies in the garden this weekend
And there is still a lot of autumn colour to enjoy
I had to use some of the apples to make an apple cake – this one is really, really easy.
Easy Apple Cake (pdf: Easy Apple cake)
250g Self Raising flour
½ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon of cinnamon
125g unsalted butter, in small pieces
50g soft brown sugar
400g cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped into 1/2cm chunks
1 egg, beaten
50ml milk
23cm springform tin, greased and base lined with baking parchment
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees/fan 160 degrees/gas mark 4.
- Sift first five ingredients into large bowl and mix. Add butter and mix until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Add milk and egg and stir into a thick dough. Stir in apples.
- Spoon into the baking tin and level.
- Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden brown and firm to touch. Cool for a short time in tin and then cool on a wire rack.
sweet enough bakes 