The Very Best Apple Dessert Cake

INTRODUCTION

I’ve been doing this special and remarkably easy recipe for years. The apples can be windfalls or even shrivelled ones left in the fruit bowl. Serve warm with ice cream or crème fraîche as a dessert, or with coffee in the morning as one would a Danish pastry, again warm, dusted with icing sugar.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3. Lightly grease a deep 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin.
   
   
2. Measure the flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs, almond extract and melted butter into a bowl. Mix well until blended, then beat for a minute.
   
   
3. Spread half this mixture in the prepared tin. Thickly slice the apples and lay on top of the mixture in the tin, piling mostly towards the centre. Using 2 dessert spoons, roughly spoon the remaining mixture over the apples. This is an awkward thing to do, but just make sure that the mixture covers the centre well as it will spread out in the oven.
   
   
4. Sprinkle with the flaked almonds.
   
   
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 1¼-1½ hours until golden and coming away from the sides of the tin.

PREPARING AHEAD - Best made to serve warm but can be made the day before. And, once cooked and cold, you can wrap and freeze it for a maximum of 3 months.

AGA - With the grid shelf on the floor of the roasting oven and the cold plain shelf on the second set of runners, cook the cake for about 20 minutes or until pale golden brown, watching carefully. Transfer the plain shelf (which is very hot!) to the middle of the simmering oven, then lift the cake very gently on to this and bake for a further 30-40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake.

This recipe is from: Mary Berry's New Aga Cookbook (Headline)