French Apple Cake
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott, adapted from Life's A Feast
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 60-70 minutes
- 6 apples, cored and sliced thinly (around 16 slices per apple)
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 4 eggs, at room temperature
- 150g/5ozs. caster or superfine sugar
- 180g/6ozs. plain all purpose flour
- 50g/1.7ozs custard powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 125ml/4flozs. vegetable oil
- 80ml/2.7flozs. milk
- 3 teaspoons vanilla extract or paste
Step 1 - Grease and line a 20cm/8inch round springform tin and preheat oven to 180C/350F. Soak the apples in water with lemon juice until ready for them.
Step 2 - Beat the eggs and caster sugar well for 2-3 minutes. Add the flour, custard powder, baking powder and salt into the mixture in 2-3 lots. Add the oil, milk and vanilla to the mixture-when the beaters are lifted it should leave a ribbon of batter.
Step 3 - Take out around 1/3 of the apples and drain well and mix with the batter. Spoon into the prepared tin. Then drain the rest of the apples and place them skin side up on top of the cake. To get a little bit of custard mixture in the centre, bake for 60 minutes. Otherwise bake for 70 minutes to cook through. Dust with icing sugar and serve warm with cream or custard.