I love Autumn. I love it for its colours, flavours and comfort. It’s the season of spice, warm jumpers and Halloween. Most importantly it’s a season which inspires comfort food with fantastic flavour combinations. Squash and goat’s cheese, pears and wine, apples and blackberries… So what’s not to love?! And even though autumn is now gone… I thought I’d share this fantastic BBC Good Food recipe which combines some my favourite fruits to use this season, which also continue to be available throughout winter.

Granted, these days you can get almost every ingredient any day – in season and out of season. But I’ve always been an advocate of seasonal cooking and taking advantage of what’s in season. Today, I want to share this fantastic, simple cake I found in BBC GoodFood magazine. I loved it because it was no-fuss, really simple to make and perfect for a nice chilled Sunday. If you bake often like I do, you might find that you have most of the ingredients (maybe minus the fruit) at home already so it is not an expensive bake either!

Apple & Blackberry Cake

Prep time: 15 mins;

Cook time: 50 mins.

Serves: 6-8

Difficulty: Easy

Perfect for: a no-fuss afternoon tea treat.

Suitable for: Vegetarians, gluten-free if you substitute the flour for a Gluten-Free self-raising flour (available in most supermarkets)

Ingredients

  • 125g Softened Butter;
  • 125g caster sugar;
  • 3 large eggs;
  • 50g ground almonds;
  • 100g self-raising flour;
  • 2 Apples (I used Cox’s, but original recipe calls for Discovery, Russet or Worcester);
  • 100g blackberries

For the topping:

  • Large pinch cinnamon;
  • 2 tbsp demerara sugar;
  • 25g butter, cut into small flakes
  • 25g peeled and toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped (toast for a few minutes in a dry pan) – optional
  • Icing sugar for dusting

Method

  1. Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Butter a 22cm round loose-bottomed cake tin and line the base with baking parchment. Beat the butter and caster sugar together in a large bowl until it is light and fluffy. Gradually pour in and beat the eggs, a little at a time, until you have used two-thirds, adding flour if it curdles. Fold in the remaining egg, the ground almonds and finally the flour, and combine everything gently.
  2. Add two-thirds of the apples to the cake mixture and all the blackberries. Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth it out evenly. Scatter the remaining apples over the surface of the cake. For the topping, sprinkle over the cinnamon, demerara sugar and butter. Bake for 50-55 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and scatter on the toasted hazelnuts. When the cake is cool, dust lightly with icing sugar.

Original recipe at https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2412648/blackberry-and-apple-cake

~Em