Tag Archives: Bramley apple

Apple Sour Cream Cake with Crumble Topping

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Last Saturday we went to the Loriendale Orchard for Apple Day.  I came home with a beautiful bag of Bramley Apples and put the call out for people to inspire me to bake something.

Apples in a paper bag, green apples

Bramley Apples

Shivaun was first in suggesting an Apple Sour Cream Cake, via facebook.  Thanks Shivaun!  I was quite taken with the idea, having never made or eaten one before.

After much searching, I settled on the Australian Women’s Weekly recipe, because it starts with 250g butter and 1 cup of sugar.  Any recipe which starts this way seems eminently practical and I love it.  I know it’s probably not good to use the entire stick of butter in a cake recipe, but it tasted good!  and 250g is far quicker to handle than working out 180g of butter.

Ingredients
250g butter, softened
220g (1 cup) caster sugar
4 eggs
200g (11/3 cups) plain flour
110g (¾ cup) self-raising flour
300g sour cream
3 medium apples, finely chopped (I used Bramleys, but any good cooking apple such as Granny Smiths would be great)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Ingredients for the Topping
40g (¼) cup plain flour
1 1/3 cup coconut
50g (¼ cup) brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
60g butter 

Preheat your oven to 180°C (160°C fan forced).  Grease base of 23cm round spring-form tin, line base with greaseproof paper.
Make topping by rubbing together the ingredients for the topping in your fingers: the flour, coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter.  You could also add nuts at this stage (such as slithered almonds or chopped walnuts).  Refrigerate topping to firm while you prepare the cake.
Cream butter and sugar in an electric mixer.  Once this mixture has become more pale (like the colour of cream) and the grit of the sugar has dissolved, add eggs one at a time, until combined.
cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time

cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time

Stir in half the sifted flours with half the sour cream, then stir in remaining flours and sour cream and lightly mix until smooth.
  1. Spread 1/3 of the cake mixture into the prepared tin
  2. Top with 1/2 the apples and sprinkle with cinnamon
  3. Spread carefully with another 1/3 of the cake mixture
  4. Top with the other 1/2 of the apples and sprinkle with cinnamon again
  5. Top with the last 1/3 of the cake mixture
  6. Grate the now firm topping evenly over the cake
layers of apple sour cream cake

layers of apple sour cream cake

The cake batter is quite stiff, so it isn’t easy to spread the cake mixture over the apples.  It requires patience to carefully coax the batter over the apples without upsetting the apple cart (so to speak).  To be honest, if you’re not particular enough to want 2 layers of apple in your cake, I think it would still work wonderfully if you just stirred your apples into the cake mixture and baked it all together.
Pop it in the oven to bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours.  Cover the cake with foil half way through the cooking process so the crumble topping doesn’t brown too much.

Apple Sour Cream Cake with Crumble Topping

yum!

 

All ginger and apples

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Happy Saturday readers!

If you’re wondering what beverage to select to wet your whistle with today…. then I ask you: do these advertisements interest you?

If so, then I urge you to run out and buy a bottle of ginger wine.  But first, stop by at the ginger wine blogspot I found these beauties at (the link below the picture above will get you there), because there are many more vintage ads on that site (some even more inappropriate by today’s standards than those I’ve cross-posted here!).

And before you run out to buy your bottle of ginger wine – let me tell you what you can do with it when you bring it home.

Ginger Wine Lemonade Lime Mint cocktail

Gingerade with a squeeze of lime and a dash of mint

While you can drink ginger wine neat, or on the rocks, it does mix particularly well.  Some people otherwise find the hot ginger taste a bit strong.  At 13.25% alcohol though, once mixed with a soft beverage, it’s a very refreshing drink regardless of the season.

Gingerade, as I like to call it, is one of the simpler concoctions:

Ingredients
1 part ginger wine
2 parts lemonade
a squeeze of lime
a few mint sprigs

Stir together over ice.

Alternatives:  mix ginger wine with ginger ale or with apple juice and cinnamon.

Ginger wine has been said to increase virility in men, stimulate appetite, cure coughs and colds, restore lost energy and increase blood flow.  So really, every gingerade you don’t drink may be doing you harm.

In conclusion, this concoction may (or may not) be good for you… but it tasted good!  

Ok, now you can run out and buy your bottle of ginger wine.

I should note, that I am in no way being sponsored by any ginger wine companies.

Apple Season in Canberra

Before I sign off, I just wanted to share with you a few photos I took this afternoon at the Loriendale Apple Day.  We had a glorious time prancing through the orchard to live music.

red apples

apples hanging in the orchard

Pears hanging about in the Orchard

Pears hanging about in the Orchard

autumn tree, coloured leaves, colored leaves

Autumnal tree at Loriendale Orchard

And… I picked up a beautiful bag of Topaz Apples to eat, and a bag of Bramley Apples to cook with!  So watch this space … I hope to do some apple baking tomorrow – if you have any ideas of what I should bake with the Bramleys, I’m open to suggestion!