Chai Spiced Apple Cake
I know. You got me. I left the blog to fend for itself. Again. So maybe we missed the month of October, but that’s only because I couldn’t think of anything good to bake for Halloween. It may also have had something to do with the fact that I was too lazy to edit photos & actually write a post, but that’s whatever. I mean, it’s a stress, this whole blogging thing. I love doing it & I think about it all the time, but it takes so much effort. I mean, taking photos & editing them & trying to think of interesting things to say. Stress. & what happens when I run out of things to say? & sometimes it’s really hard to get across what I mean without sounding like a complete idiot. Okay.. it’s hard all the time. Okay fine, I rarely manage it. & by rarely I mean practically never. Gah.
Even though I haven’t posted in forever & a day, I’ve still been baking. Obviously. It’s like an addiction at this stage.
This time of year always means apples. Apples galore. Somehow we always end up with about four bags filled to the brim with a million apples & we never know what to do with them. I mean, there’s only so many times you can make apple pie in a month, people want different things. So we (& by we I mean I went on a lone quest while my family thought I was insane) scoured through every single cookbook in the house until we had a nice pile of different apple baked goods. I will never run out of ideas ever again.
This recipe is one that I made a few months ago, before the apple craze really happened. Because it wasn’t really the season, I photographed the cake, threw it into the freezer, & didn’t think about it again until we had a cake emergency (more frequent than you’d think) a few weeks ago. It’s the kind of cake you serve in thick slices, with big mugs of steaming coffee, perfect for the cold days descending upon us. It’s simple & easy to throw together, bursting with flavour from the apples & the warm chai spices.
& yeah.. there’s only one picture. Oop. We’re dealing with things a little at a time, no pressure to edit heaps of pictures. Dealing.
Makes one 9-inch cake (adapted from Joy the Baker)
Ingredients
1 ½ cups of plain flour
¾ teaspoon of baking powder
¼ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon of ground ginger
½ teaspoon of cardamom
¼ teaspoon of black pepper
1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves
¾ teaspoon of salt
6 tablespoons of unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup of caster sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 cup of natural yogurt
4 apples, cored & sliced into thin rounds
¼ cup caster sugar mixed with ¾ teaspoon of cinnamon
Method
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C, & grease and line the base & sides of a 9-inch spring-form pan. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, bicarb, all of the spices, & the salt. Leave aside.
In a large bowl, use an electric whisk to beat together the butter and the sugar until thoroughly combined & lighter in colour. Once combined, add the egg, beat for a further 1 minutes, & then add the egg yolk, beating until fully incorporated. Lastly, beat in the vanilla extract.
Using a low speed on your mixer, beat half of the flour into the butter mixture. When mixed, add the natural yogurt, and when it is just about combined add the rest of the flour mix. Stop using the electric whisk just before the last of the flour has been incorporated, & complete the mixing with a spatula.
Pour the batter into your prepared tin & spread it around evenly. Scatter the sliced apples decoratively (or as messily as you like) across the top & finish it off with a generous sprinkling of the cinnamon sugar. Place into the preheated oven & bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
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