Autumn is by far my favourite season for food. You get so many brilliant seasonal flavours and all my favourite fruits and veggies are in season. I currently cannot get enough of figs, apples and blackberries so expect to see a lot of those featured in blog posts…

Starting with this delicious Waitrose Food cake which I made for this month’s Macmillan World’s Biggest Coffee Morning. It was so good, it won me a Best Baker award at our work little Best Bake competition! So, this is  technically an award winning cake!

The original recipe link is below, in the version below, I’ve adjusted the quantities for the icing as I found the original quantities to make a slightly stiffer icing to my liking.

Apple and Blackberry cake with Clotted Cream Icing

Serves 10-12 | Prep time 35 minutes | Cooking time 1 hr | A little effort | Vegetarian

Picture of apple and blackberry cake

Tip: If you want to get ahead, you can make the cake a couple of days in advance and keep uniced in an airtight container in the fridge.

You’ll need:
  • 150g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing;
  • 150g light brown soft sugar;
  • 3 eggs;
  • 185g self-raising flour, sifted;
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract;
  • ½ tsp baking powder;
  • 150g blanched hazelnuts, toasted and roughly chopped;
  • 320g Cooking Apples (about 2), peeled and chopped into 1cm cubes;
  • 180g Blackberries.
For the Clotted Cream Icing:
  • 227g Clotted Cream;
  • 370g icing sugar, sifted;
  • 1-2 tsp whole milk (optional).

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas mark 4. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin. Using electric beaters or a freestanding mixer, beat together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, alternating with a few spoonfuls of the flour, then the vanilla extract, until combined. Stir through the remaining flour, plus the baking powder and 100g chopped hazelnuts, then fold in the cubed apple until just combined.

Spoon 1/3 of the mixture into the tin, then dot with ½ the blackberries. Add another 1/3 of mixture, followed by the remaining blackberries, then finish with the rest of the mixture. Bake for about 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted in the loaf comes out clean. Cover with foil after about 45 minutes if it’s browning too quickly on top.

To make the icing, whisk the clotted cream with electric beaters until smooth. Gradually sift in the icing sugar until you have a thick icing. If you need to loosen your icing, mix 1-2 tsp milk for a spreadable consistency. Keep chilled until needed and take out of the fridge 15 minutes before icing.

When the loaf is cooked, leave to cool in its tin for 10 minutes before carefully removing and allowing to cool completely on a wire rack. When cool, top with the clotted cream icing, before scattering with the remaining 50g chopped hazelnuts.

Original recipe from the Waitrose Food magazine September 2018, baking supplement, available online here.