A little crumb of heaven

Back in December, for no reason in particular, I decided to do a bit more baking.  I am very fond of apple cakes and having never made one myself, I decided it was high time I did.

apple and cinnamon cake with maple cream cheese frosting

I found the recipe for this lovely cake on a blog called 'Drizzle and Dip', needless to say I found the promise of a maple cream cheese frosting particularly enticing!

My initial mistake was to buy way cooking apples!  The recipe called for four apples but I mistakenly bought cooking apples and I ended up barely using one of them.  Oops.

Dice the apple

After dicing the apple I whipped up a cake batter mixing plain flour, some cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, sunflower oil, caster sugar, vanilla extract, eggs and lemon zest.  Once the ingredients were combined I folded in the diced apple.  I could actually have added a little more but I erred on the side of caution!

The recipe says it needs between an 75 and 90 minutes in the oven but I would suggest baking it for fifty minutes then testing it with a skewer.  If it comes out clean then remove the cake from the oven as you'll burn the bottom and it will go really dry if you leave it in for the full time.

Let the cake cool

Don't try putting the frosting on until the cake is cool as it's a mixture of butter, muscavado sugar, maple syrup and cream cheese which is quite runny.  I'd definitely advise using an electric mixer to beat the icing together, I didn't have one and although it came out nicely my arm ached for quite a while afterwards!

I cut the cake in half and put about a third of the frosting in the centre and the rest on top.  If you want to put more in the middle I'd suggest making extra as you want enough for a nice even layer on top.  Leave the icing to set before dusting with icing sugar (or a little more cinnamon).

Decadent

If you want to make this rich dessert even more decadent you could have it with some dessert wine.  I had it with some Maury Solera 1928, a deep, rich dessert wine with lovely nutty flavours.  That said, this is a delicious treat in its own right!

French Toast

French toast is possibly one of the simplest, yet tastiest, brunches I can think of!  It's perfect for a lazy morning when you want something a little more special for not a lot more effort.

French toast with mixed fruit

For 2 people you will need:
2 eggs
Splash of milk
(vanilla essence)
Bread (this was enough for 4 slices)
butter for frying
1tsp brown sugar
Your choice of toppings - for the first slice I used fruit (bananas, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries) and for the second I made caramelised apples with cinnamon.  You could also add a dollop of Greek yoghurt, or golden syrup if you fancy something sweeter.

Whisk the eggs in a bowl (the wider the better - to make it easier to dip the bread in) with a splash of milk and a drop of vanilla essence (optional).  Melt some butter in a frying pan (enough to coat the bottom of the pan), dip both sides of a slice of bread in the egg mixture and fry it in the pan.  It should only need a couple of minutes on each side.  Once browned remove from the pan and sprinkle over the fruit and sugar or syrup.

If you have a little more time you could peel and slice an apple and sauté (fry quickly in a hot pan) the slices in 1tsp brown sugar, 1tbsp butter and 1tsp cinnamon.

French toast with caramelised cinnamon apples