Apple Cake made with Golden Syrup Sugar

For the last few months of 2013, I found myself having to economise in a way that I hadn't had to for many years. One of the changes I made in my weekly shopping basket was to avoid buying any fancy sugar - nothing but the cheapest white granulated. I used it in all my home baking and although the results were perfectly OK, I did miss the subtle flavour enhancing tastes imparted by the slightly more expensive unrefined sugars -  especially in my crumble toppings (I was making a lot of crumbles thanks to a glut of cooking apples from the tree in the garden).

Now that the purse strings have been loosened a little, I definitely think it is worth spending the extra to experiment with the whole range of sugars available. 

I was quite excited to see that Tate and Lyle had brought out a new, British inspired Golden Syrup Sugar - and even more excited to be offered a sample to try. 

As I still have apples in my larder, I decided to make an apple cake from a recipe that I have already adapted several times with good results. It is a lovely, comforting winter pud, great served hot or cold with cream, ice cream or custard. This is the recipe as I made it last night:

Apple Cake

200g SR flour ( I used the Savers budget range from Morrisons)

2tsp ground ginger

100g margarine

100g Golden Syrup Sugar

1 large egg (from my lovely hens)

8tbsp milk

1 cooking apple, peeled, cored and diced.

Extra Golden Syrup Sugar for sprinkling on top

1. Preheat oven to 200ºC

2. Mix flour and ginger together ( I didn't bother sieving)

3. Rub in the marg

4. Stir in the Golden Syrup Sugar (taking time to enjoy the smell!)

5. Add egg and milk and beat to a thick smooth batter

6. Stir in diced apple

7. Transfer to tin (I used a non stick 8" round one with removable bottom)

8. Sprinkle top with Golden Syrup Sugar (tricky because it has the consistency of wet sand) 

9. Cook until firm and golden, approx 35 mins

I was pleased with how it came out but as the saying goes - the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I served it with cream and asked my husband for his verdict. He agreed with me that it was good but I pushed him further to see if he could identify a mystery ingredient. He took another mouthful, contemplated a while then said it tasted a bit like.... Golden Syrup!

10/10 for my husband's tastebuds and a big thumbs up for the new member of the Tate & Lyle family.

For information about the Tate & Lyle range, recipe ideas and more, visit http://www.tasteandsmile.co.uk/

Apple Season

I love good food and I  love to cook. Sometimes I will throw a bag of oven chips and a pizza in the oven and open a can of baked beans, but when time allows, there is nothing as satisfying as preparing a wonderful, well thought out meal and having it enjoyed by my family.

Most of all, I love to embrace the seasonality of cooking. Don't get me wrong, if I want fresh strawberries on Christmas day I will buy them, but I can guarantee that they won't fill me with the same joy as the first succulent red fruit of the summer from my garden. Better yet if that fruit is picked and eaten straight from the plant, warmed by the summer sun.

At this time of year, there is no shortage of windfalls from the two apple trees in my garden. The trees are very old and seem to harbour quite an extensive ecosystem of bugs and fungi. This does not create an environment conducive to the production of perfect fruits. They do tend to be a bit scabby and ... well maggoty! It takes a braver person than I to actually bite into one without a preliminary exploratory! I suppose I could fight back with insecticides and fungicides but it goes against my principles to live as natural and organic life as I can. I could tackle the problem with the alternative green solutions but if I'm honest, I don't really have a problem with the bugs taking their share as long as there is some left for me.

I do still buy apples from the supermarket for just straight eating, but for cooking, my garden apples are great. My favourite use is for Apple Crumble.

My family never tire of crumble. We vary the crumble topping by using different sugars (from regular white granulated to the dark muscavado) and adding oats of different grades (from fine oatmeal to jumbo oats) and sometimes using a range of different chopped nuts as I have available. No two crumbles are ever the same! I also vary the filling by adding small amounts of other ingredients. Summer fruits from the garden that I have frozen are a family favourite but my personal favourite is to mix some pear in with the apple. Served with cream or ice cream or custard it never stops being a treat.

I have recently started going to a local ice cream farm that sell 30 amazing flavours of ice cream. I am already imagining an apple crumble served with their sticky toffee pudding flavour ice cream.

As much as I love variety and experimentation, there is also something thoroughly comforting about my mum's apple pie. 

My mum is amazing. You give her a giant bag of cruddy old windfalls and she will return the following week with a beautifully crafted home made apple pie for me and one for my sister. They are always identical. They are always delicious. As long as I keep giving her the apples, the apple pies keep appearing. I make sure I keep giving her the apples!

I will finish with a story from 'apple season' a few years ago.

My husband is a darling. Every morning, for as long as we have been together, he brings me a cup of tea in bed.  He is a morning person. I am not. I can barely open my eyes without that first injection of caffeine. This particular morning, as with most mornings, I was thoroughly enjoying my morning brew whilst relaxing into my plumped up pillows. I am a 'drain the mug dry' sort of person and that is exactly what I did. There was something a bit odd about that last mouthful though. There was something solid in it. Thinking it was a lump of scale from the kettle I rolled it around my mouth with my tongue to identify it and get it into a position for easy ejection. It didn't feel like scale. It felt more meaty somehow. Could it be a large grain of rice that had become engorged with the boiling water? No, it was far too big for that. I was absolutely horrified when I removed it from my mouth to see that it was a grotesquely bloated, pink headed maggot. It must have migrated from the gathered windfalls in my kitchen and found its way into the mug that my husband had left by the kettle in readiness for his tea making duty. Even now, thinking about those moments that I rolled it around my mouth with my tongue make me feel a little peculiar.

It is a testament to how much I love my husband that I was able to forgive him!

This post was inspired by 'Oui Chef"  at http://www.beckicklesie.com/ 
"Mum's Cooking".