apple cinnamon pecan tea cake

apple cinnamon pecan tea cake

• 14 Mar 2016

Hi All,

I've just walked in the door from my flying trip home to Brisbane for the weekend. Even though It's officially autumn here in Sydney though you wouldn't know it by the weather which is resolutely stuck in summer mode. With autumn comes the new season apples and I bought some little Gala apples to top this tea cake. 




I found the recipe in an old issue of Donna Hay magazine but needed to scale down the original recipe to fit into my small tin. Our staff numbers have fallen in recent times and some people have gone sugar free so I rarely use my old 9 inch spring form tin these days.





When I looked through the recipe it looked remarkably like the Plum and Walnut cake I recently made. That was pretty tasty so I hoped this cake would be similarly delicious.





The cake was a breeze to make and slicing the apples was the most time consuming part of the exercise. I mulled over whether I should squeeze the final half into the centre of the cake. Next time I'd leave this one out as it sank to the bottom of the cake and was still a little undercooked after the 1½ hour cooking time. The cake came out very high so is probably better suited to a 20cm/8 inch round cake tin.



Once out of the oven the cake smelled just like a cinnamon doughnut and the aroma tempted all. The cake disappeared in record time and by lunch time there wasn't a single crumb left.



Here's the recipe for you, which makes a 17 cm cake. If you want to make a larger cake you can find the original proportions here. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.

Apple Cinnamon Pecan Tea Cake

Cake
125g butter, softened
¾ cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
¾ cup self raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ cup almond meal
¼ cup sour cream
¼ cup milk
40g pecans, coarsely chopped
4 small apples, peeled, halved and cored

Topping
Melted butter for brushing
1 tbs (20 ml) sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon

Method
Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC). Grease and line a 17 cm spring-form pan with baking paper.

Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and beat until light and creamy. Gradually add the eggs and beat well. Sift flour and the cinnamon together. Add the flour mixture and almond meal to the butter mixture and stir in the sour cream and milk to form a soft batter Stir in the chopped pecans then spoon the mixture into spring-form pan. Level the top.

Cut a row of deep slits in each apple half and press apples into the batter. Bake for 1¼ – 1½ hours or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin. When cool, brush the cake with melted butter. Combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the top.




I hope you enjoy making this cake.

Bye for now,

Jillian