Rebecca’s Recipe of the Week: Apple Spice Cake | Canalside Community Food

This moist apple cake uses oil in place of butter, which makes it exceptionally tender and probably also lower in cholesterol. It offers a perfect autumnal blend of fresh apples, spices and walnuts, and is very nice with a cup of tea. It keeps very well, should you somehow not eat it all in the first 48 hours.

If you don’t have a set of cup measures, don’t worry. 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces, so you can use an ordinary measuring jug.

Ingredients
1¼ cups vegetable oil
2 cups brown sugar (any mix of soft brown sugar, light muscovado, and dark muscovado)
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups plain white flour, or 2 cups plain white flour and 1 cup plain wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar + 2 tablespoons water (or 3 tablespoons water)
3 cups chopped apples (peeled or not, as you prefer, cut into whatever sizes you’d like to find in your cake)
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 180C. Butter or oil a 10-inch Bundt pan, or similar tube pan. Coat the pan with a light dusting of flour and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the oil and sugar for 5 minutes, or until thick. This is a good use of your stand mixer if you have one. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after adding each one. Add the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spices).

Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and beat until smooth. Stir in the apple cider vinegar and water.

Fold in the chopped apples and nuts.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for an hour, or until the cake is golden brown, smells lovely, and is pulling away from the widest part of the pan.

Cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes and then invert onto a rack. Leave to cool more or eat it right away.

Recipe adapted from Moosewood Collective, Moosewood Restaurant Favorites: The 250 Most Requested Naturally Delicious Recipes from One of America’s Best-loved Restaurants (2013).