I got a text from my mate Deb, the virtual cook, last week. It read:
I have a really nice dessert recipe for you. I will email it sometime this week. I didn’t make it but had the pleasure of eating it.
Later in the week, the pre-empted email arrived. I read the first line (Whenever I bake this cake I think of my mum, Cooee, …) and was immediately interested. There is only one cookbook writer with a mum called “Cooee” – Belinda Jeffery, of course. 🙂 I went to my cookbooks and searched for the recipe. “Strange,” I thought. “I don’t have it!!!!” I found a very similar recipe in Mix & Bake called Apple & Pecan Crumble Cake but it wasn’t exactly the same.
I went on-line and found that Belinda has published a new cookbook (Utterly Delicious Simple Food )… and I didn’t even know about it! That is the only disadvantage, that I can think of, about retirement. I used to spend my lunch breaks scouring book stores and music shops. I was totally up with all the new releases. Now, a year can go by before I realise someone I love has released a CD or published a book.
Belinda’s new book will just have to go onto my Christmas list.
Because it was a Belinda recipe, and to be a sport I decided to make it. I am glad I did. Deb was right. It was very nice indeed and very easy to make.
I have to confess, I used walnuts rather than pecans. I always have walnuts on hand but would have to have gone shopping for pecans. Walnuts won hands down. In any event, in this case, I think they are interchangeable.
Ingredients (Apple cake):
- 150g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp fine salt
- 200g caster sugar
- 2 eggs, at room temperature
- 150g unsalted butter, cut into chunks, at room temperature
- 1½ tsps vanilla extract
- 125 mls milk, at room temperature
- about 4 smallish Royal Gala or Pink Lady apples, peeled, halved and cored, then cut into 4 mm slices
- icing sugar for dusting
Ingredients (Pecan (walnut) and cinnamon crumble):
- 130g lightly roasted pecans or walnuts
- 60g brown sugar
- 1½ tsps ground cinnamon
- 40g cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
Method (Pecan and cinnamon crumble):
Put all the ingredients into a food processor fitted with the steel blade and pulse until the nuts are coarsely chopped and the mixture crumbly. Don’t let it go too far. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until needed.
Method (Apple Cake):
- Line a 25cm spring form cake tin with baking paper.
- Preheat your oven to 180°C.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together then set aside.
- Put the sugar and eggs into a processor and process until well combined.
- Add the butter and process until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
- Add the vanilla and the milk and whizz until combined.
- Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and fold until well combined.
- Spread the batter evenly into the prepared cake tin.
- Arrange the apple slices in a single layer over the batter. Push the slices into the batter.
- Sprinkle the crumble evenly over the apple.
- Put the cake in the preheated oven and bake until a skewer, inserted in the middle of the cake, comes out clean: about one hour.
- Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes. Put a plate over the cake and invert the cake. Remove the baking paper. Put a cake rack over the base of the cake then upright the cake.
- When cool, place on a serving plate.
- Just before serving, dust with icing sugar.
- Serve warm or at room temperature, with cream or icecream.
Passion Fruit Garden 
Glenda this looks delicious- any cakes with crumble remind me of my time in the US- yours looks really good!
Lara
Thanks Lara.
Looks very tasty Glenda. But I have to admit that I’m surprised there’s a recipe you don’t have. You’ve got a pretty busy retirement if you can’t sneak in some book browsing time. Seems like people always assume retirement means that you sit around doing nothing when I’ve found just the opposite to be the case. I have to say though that this Pinterest is one of the biggest time suckers I’ve run into. I can’t get enough of looking at all the great ideas on there.
Oh Diane, there are so many time wasters out there to tempt us. I watched about 50 soap making YouTube videos before I could take no more. I am amazed how busy Maus and I am but we are busy doing things we like not busy making money for someone else.
Hello Glenda, I was very pleased you took my advise & made this lovely dessert. I had mine with double cream & I thought to myself then this is a winner.
As Kate said, keep the recipes coming as we all enjoy your blog.
Deb x
Hey Deb, have you made it yet?
No I have not made this lovely recipe yet, but next Tuesday morning I have a date with this recipe. I will advise the outcome but you know kitchens & me don’t really mix. xx
Ooh that is exciting. I am sure it will be great. You will not be a virtual cook for much longer. 🙂
Hi Aunty Glen, I made it for the girls for dessert last night and all 3 of them asked for seconds. It was a winner! After demolishing 5 slices of your spicy pumpkin loaf on our visit I also made that on Friday and it was delicious! Keep the recipes coming!!!
Thanks Kate for stopping by and commenting. That spicy pumpkin loaf is a definite winner. I think it is perfect. Glad the girls like the apple cake too. They have good taste.
Thanks Kate for stopping by and commenting. That spicy pumpkin loaf is a definite winner. I think it is perfect. Glad the girls like the apple cake too. They have good taste.
Love the colours. Rich yellow and shades of brown… sort of retro in style as well as taste. I think walnuts with apple rather than pecans anyway. It’s always nice to have a new cookbook on the wishlist 🙂
Sure is Ella.
Looks like a delicious recipe Glenda and like you, usually have walnuts in my store cupboard… whipped cream on the side for me please. 🙂
We don’t usually have pecans. I think they must grow around where Belinda Jeffery lives as she uses them a lot. They are not big here.
See now, I would have to try this with walnuts, pecans, pistachios, macadamias…
Fabulous with a cuppa.
Have a lovely day Glenda.
🙂 Mandy xo
Thanks Mandy. If you did that you might get a wee bit fat. 🙂