Madhouse recipe : Apple Cake with Toffee Sauce

As I had a few forlorn looking apples in the fruit bowl, I headed online for recipe inspiration to use them up. On the Baking Mad website, I spotted a recipe for Toffee Apple Cake, which had the added bonus of using up some of the black treacle and dried fruit cluttering up my baking cupboard. Win-win ! I adapted it slightly to suit what I had in the cupboards, so do head over to see the original recipe.

Apple Cake with Toffee Sauce

ingredients :

For the cake:

175g salted butter (softened)

125g muscovado sugar (I used a mixture of dark and light as I was using up ends of bags)

100g dates

70ml apple juice

3 eggs

220g flour (self raising or plain + 1tsp baking powder)

2 tsp mixed spice

3 apples

squirt of lemon juice

For the toffee sauce:

150ml marscapone

85g butter (salted)

100g demerara sugar (I used coconut sugar)

1 tbsp Black treacle

Preheat the oven to 180°. Chop the dates and put them in a saucepan, with the apple juice. Bring to the boil on a gentle heat then turn off the heat and leave to cool.

Cream together the butter and sugar until they turn pale and fluffy. 

Beat in the eggs, one by one, adding a spoonful of flour if the mixture starts to curdle. Fold in the flour and spices, then stir in the cooled date mixture. 

Pour into a cake tin or silicon mould.

Peel and slice the apples and toss in lemon juice. Arrange on top of the cake.

 Bake for 50 -55 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

To make the toffee sauce, combine all of the ingredients in a small saucepan and heat gently until they start to bubble. 

Continue to heat for a few minutes,stirring, until combined and smooth.

Serve the cake with the warm toffee sauce drizzled over the top.

By itself, the cake is slightly bland and dry, but with the addition of toffee sauce, it's lovely.

Adding to this month's #KitchenClearout linky as it used up various odds and ends, including wrinkly apples, black treacle, ends of bags of sugar and a pack of dates.