DIVINE Apple Fritter Cake!

This apple fritter cake is a real crowd pleaser. It starts with a light, buttery cake base that is layered with an apple and brown sugar topping and then it is finished with a vanilla glaze. This apple cake is great to feed a crowd and uses up lots of apples. Best of all is that it is super simple to make not needing any special equipment or mixers! This is a pushy recipe Dear Reader! I called her Pomona.

I both love apple fritter donuts but I don't like deep frying so this cake was the perfect way to get the apple fritter donut flavour via baking. This apple cake came up as a suggestion on Instagram for me and as soon as I saw that gorgeous glaze I knew that I had to make it so I followed the trail to the apple fritter cake recipe which was on Budget101. The main reason that I wanted to make it was the enormous bowl of apples I had on my kitchen counter. I love getting my fortnightly vege box but during winter there's a lot of apples. Like A LOT. Couple that with the fact that Mr NQN and I don't like raw apples so we had about 20 apples that I wanted to use up.

This apple fritter cake has THREE DELICIOUS layers:

1 - The first is a simple vanilla butter cake base topped with chopped up apples. The cake base is made in a bowl with a spatula so no mixer is needed. It has a really lovely, light quality to it and a delicious buttery flavour.

2- The second part is a delicious buttery brown sugar cinnamon topping that you can mix up in a bowl with a spatula. The only thing is that you will need to make sure that the butter is quite soft (but not melted) so that it easily melds into a paste texture with very little effort.

3 - The last part is the vanilla glaze. You can make the glaze while the cake is baking. I hate sifting so I always make glazes in the food processor or Thermomix to save time and effort.

I love cooking for a crowd because I love having people over but I think small crowds are ideal for me. Earlier this month we had the Elliotts over and we got some fun news-Mr NQN's sister Araluen is engaged! Araluen is in love with love and weddings. She's a bit like Liz Taylor and J Lo in that respect. This is her fourth marriage and she approaches it with candour. Her fiancé is Ben, the son of a well known Australian artist and he is a musician and lives in the inner west. "The wedding is September 10th!' she said excitedly. We were all a bit shocked but then she clarified that it was the 10th of September 2023.

We started excitedly talking about the wedding. The budget is limited and she is planning a simple wedding with just family although with two large families it ends up being quite sizeable-everyone with their partners will end up being around 40 people. I think she was hoping that they could have it at our house but our house isn't quite big enough (nor do I think we are mentally or physically ready to host an alternative wedding). We already planned the hen's night though -Ben's brother hosts a karaoke night so I'm looking forward to getting back to some karaoke singing which I haven't done since BC (Before COVID).

So tell me Dear Reader, do you have any tips for weddings on a budget? Do you like apple fritters? What do you need to use up in your fruit bowl or fridge?

Apple Fritter Cake

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Serves: 8 people

Cake

• 330g/12ozs. cake flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 165g/5.9ozs. caster or superfine sugar
• 280ml/10flozs. buttermilk
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
• 100g/3.5ozs. melted butter plus a little extra for greasing the baking dish
• 600g/21ozs. (around 4-5) apples, peeled and diced

Topping

• 220g/7.7ozs. butter, softened
• 220g/7.7ozs. brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Glaze

• 280g/10ozs. icing or powdered sugar
• 65ml/2.3flozs. milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
• Pinch salt

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 180C/350F and butter a 19x26x7cms/7.6x10.4x2.8inch baking dish. First make the topping as you want this ready. With a spatula mix the softened butter (make sure it's soft and very spreadable but not melted), brown sugar, flour and cinnamon and set aside.

Step 2 -In a large bowl sift the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. In a jug whisk the buttermilk with the eggs and vanilla. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the milk and butter mixture mixing until there are no lumps. Scoop into the prepared tin. Scattered the diced apples on top of the batter distributing them evenly.

Step 3 -Dollop the topping mixture over the apples in spoonfuls trying to cover the apples. Take a knife and drag through the batter and topping to help ingredients to comingle. Then bake in the oven for 45 minutes. If the cake is browning too fast cover with foil.

Step 4 -Place the powdered sugar in a food processor and blitz until no lumps remain. Add the milk and vanilla and process until you get a smooth icing. Drizzle on top of the apple cake. Serve with vanilla ice cream or cream.