This is without question one of my dream cakes!
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With no plain piping nozzle to hand I had to
use a piping bag with the end trimmed off
to pipe these kisses! |
This cake is comprised of three wonderfully moist apple sponges, containing homemade apple puree for flavour and texture and spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, is filled with homemade apple butter, and is decorated with salted toffee buttercream! All flavours that I just adore!
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| Glowing in the fire light! |
Although we didn't do anything as a group for Halloween, when Bonfire Night came around we just had to have a little gathering around the firepit, making use of the bar we built last year by having a few drinks and a catch up! I decided to bake this cake to surprise my friends with, and it went down better than I could have hoped for!
Whilst this cake is something of a dream for me it definitely didn't come together like one! For a start I've never made apple puree or apple butter before, and whilst both of these were valuable firsts for me, the apple puree was the easier of the two fillings to make! For the puree, I just had to cook bramley apples with soft brown sugar and lemon juice in a covered pan until the apples softened and a thick puree was formed, simple!
The apple butter on the other hand was a nightmare! I had no idea what apple butter was, and with no descriptions of the finished butter in the recipe I really did not know what I was aiming for. To make the butter, I had to combined diced braeburn apples, golden caster sugar, lemon juice and zest, and water in a pan, and cook for around an hour to create a paste! I had to try this three times before I finally produced a good quality apple butter, as I burned my first two whilst the apples just wouldn't break down! My finished butter had a couple of lumps in it, but I feel like this added some nice variety to the texture!
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A rare picture of me with one of my
bakes! |
Now it's safe to say that when it comes to hosting I'm no Nigella, as I hadn't actually finished cleaning up when the first of my friends arrived! The messiest part was definitely making the toffee apples for the top of the cake. To do this, I simply made a caramel, scooped balls from braeburn apples with a melon baller, and dipped them in the caramel. I then left the caramel to drip off the side of the counter to form strands whilst it solidified, meaning plenty of sugar dripped onto the paper I'd put down!
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I had to show off the cross section
of this cake, even if the caramel
had melted the day after! |
As a bonus decoration though I accidentally created some spun sugar when the caramel ran off the apples and spindled up, which I was able to pick up with cold hands. Unfortunately this melted very quickly when I left the cake next to the fire pit!
Even with the slightly rushed decoration and melting caramel I'm still over the moon with how this cake turned. I might even just turn my hand to hosting more often if it gives me the excuse to mess around with cakes like these again!
Gibby x
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