This apple & cardamom cake is a great option for these colder days. Easy to make and perfect to have with some tea or coffee. The amount of cardamom is subtle, warming, but not overpowering.
Ingredients:
Crumble:
- 75g plain flour
- 55g granulated sugar
- 45g butter – melted
Blackberry Jam:
- 175g blackberries*
- 15g granulated sugar
- 10g water
- 10g lemon juice
- 5g cornflour + 10g water
Cake:
- 170g apples (around 2 big apples, I used Bramley)
- 100g unsalted butter
- 70g granulated sugar
- 90g light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 220g plain flour
- 5g baking powder
- 2.5g ground cardamom
- Pinch of salt
- 120g whole milk – room temp
*During the off-season, it might be best to buy frozen blackberries for best flavours.
Instructions:
Crumble:
- Place flour and sugar in a bowl.
- Melt the butter in a microwave (no need to cool) and pour it into the bowl. Using a fork, stir everything until combined – the mixture should start forming into crumbs. You can then use your fingers to squeeze smaller crumbs together to create a few thicker crumbs – totally up to you.
- Place in the fridge while you prepare the blackberry jam and cake layers.
Blackberry jam:
- Place blackberries, sugar, lemon juice and 15g water in a small saucepan over a medium heat and allow to cook for a few minutes until you can see the fruits start to soften and break apart. Please don’t leave them cooking for too long as you don’t want the jam to start evaporating.
- Take the saucepan off the heat and using a hand blender, blend the blackberries. I do not remove the seeds.
- Return the saucepan to the stove over a low heat. Place the cornflour and 10g of water in a small cup, stir well and pour into the saucepan – start stirring at the same time until the blackberry jam just starts to thicken slightly, it will happen pretty quickly.
- Take the saucepan off the heat and transfer the blackberry jam into a bowl to cool slightly while you prepare the cake layer.
Cake:
- Preheat the oven to 170C – fan.
- Line the bottom of a 22cm round (spring form) tin with baking paper – I always make sure to cut a bigger piece than the bottom of the tin, so that there is some extra baking paper that just stays on the outside of the tin once I’ve put on the sides of the tin. Grease the sides of the tin with a little bit of butter/oil, cut two strips of baking paper and stick them to the sides.
- Peel the apples, chop them into small squares and leave them on the side for now. The next steps won’t take too long, but in case your apples start turning a little brown, do not worry.
- Put the flour, baking powder, pinch of salt and ground cardamom into a medium bowl, stir together and leave aside.
- Place the butter and two sugars in the bowl of your stand mixer and using the medium speed beat together for about 2-3minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl, if needed.
- Turn the mixer down to slow speed and add in the eggs – one at a time along with the vanilla extract. Beat together until combined.
- Add the room temperature milk and mix (low speed) for a short period of time until combined. The mixture might look curdled at this point, but don’t worry, this will not ruin the final effect.
- Add the dry ingredients and slowly combine everything together using a spatula. Add the chopped apples and stir them through.
- Transfer the batter into the prepared tin, even it out and then spread the blackberry jam over the top. Sprinkle with the prepared crumble making sure it covers the entire surface, up to the tin sides.
- Bake for about 45mins or until a bbq skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin.
- Dust with some icing sugar.
Enjoy!
If you make this apple & cardamom cake, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram or leave a comment at the bottom of this post. 🙂
