Apple cinnamon tea cake

My red KitchenAid is one of my very favourite possessions. The Hungry Dad bought it as a gift for me many years ago, when I was just getting into baking. Talk about full-blown addition – now if I don’t bake at least once a day I feel all jittery until I can get a hit of the baking good stuff.

Anyway, my beloved KitchenAid gets quite the workout, as you can imagine, so every so often I like to make a cake that requires no horsepower.

Baking using a just bowl and spoon always makes me think of how easy we have things now, and hard women in the past had it. I think especially about what it would have been like for women who arrived in Australia from the UK 150 years ago. They arrived in a strange, hot, strange world where everything was different to home, and where baking required you to source your own ingredients. Can you imagine having to mill your own flour, milk your own cows, churn your own butter and collect eggs – just to bake a cake? I get cranky if I run out of ingredients – and I have two major supermarkets about three minutes away from me.

I had a tin of pie apples gathering dust in the pantry so I thought of combining them with sugar and cinnamon to create an old-fashioned apple cinnamon cake.

Serve this cake as is, or blanket in cream for a decadent dessert. This teacake is also perfect for a picnic or just an afternoon treat. Serve in big squares and savour the marriage of apple, cinnamon and sugar, a lovely classic combination

GATHER:

2 cups self-raising flour

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

⅓ cup canola oil

1 egg

1 cup full fat milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

400 grams tinned apple pieces

sugar topping

2 tablespoons caster sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

LET’S GET TO IT:

Preheat oven to 160C and grease and line a 20cm square baking pan with non-stick baking paper.

In a large bowl use a silver spoon to stir sugar, cinnamon and flour together until combined

Add remaining ingredients – except the topping – and stir until everything us just mixed in. Do not over-beat.

Pour into the prepared tin and level the top with a spatula.

Stir the sugar topping ingredients in a small bowl and distribute over the cake.

Bake for around 65 minutes – 70 minutes and cool in pan.

Cut into large squares to serve.

Tags: afternoon tea, apple, baking, cake, cinnamon, cooking, eat, food, picnic, recipe, sugar