Nostalgic six minute Apple and Cinnamon Tea Cake

 

This classic Apple Tea Cake was perfect to bake one wet weekend, and is a cake I've been meaning to make again for quite a while. It doesn't need to be raining either by the way to bake this one. Tea cakes are meant to be made very quickly, in 6 minutes in fact, when visitors are on the way, popped into the oven for 30 minutes and be ready to enjoy with them while still warm. Once again, apple and cinnamon are an amazing combination. If you have apples in your crisper, this cake isn't far away.

I was enjoying searching through my Mum's old and precious recipe books looking for her tea cake recipe. There's such a treasure house of memories in those books, and to my delight I found this one. I suppose this recipe could be about 15 years old now, and it cooked up beautifully. Tea cakes are meant to be eaten straight away whilst still warm, and have a reputation for not being as fresh the following day however this one still was. As a child, I can also remember sitting with my Mum and my Great Aunt Eileen, who was a Home Science teacher and a wonderful cook, and eating her tea cake and being offered butter to spread on it, which we did with no guilt at all in those days. What the heck I still don't feel guilty.  Tea cake tastes so good spread with butter. Those were the days. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.

Finding this recipe also made me think about how these days we rarely write out recipes to pass onto friends.  We either send them the link to where we found it on the computer, for example on a blog, or scan the recipe out of the recipe book we own, or I suppose sometimes if we can remember it we tell them how it is made and they might write it out there and then. 

A couple of my friends still give me the original copy of a recipe from where they found it in a magazine or a newspaper if they no longer want it. I have a drawer full of those waiting to be tried, however I still have lots of hand written recipes in folders which I have been given over the years and which are favourites. I will always keep those, inevitably though some of them will appear on my food blog for easy access. There are so many special memories and so much history embedded in food and recipes, don't you think? 

Simple Ingredients:

1/4 cup milk
2 eggs
1 cup Self Raising Flour
3/4 cup castor sugar

125g butter or 1/4 lb
1 tablespoon plain flour

Topping:

Sliced sweet apple, cinnamon sugar for the topping, or make your own as follows.  
Mix together 3 tablespoons sugar and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Spread what you need over the apples, and store the rest in a covered container. There will be a next time to use it.

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180 deg. C.

Grease and line with baking parchment a 20 cm cake tin.

Beat all ingredients together for 6 minutes in your electric mixer.

Pour batter into your lined cake tin. 

Decorate the cake batter with sliced apple, cinnamon and sugar before placing in the oven. If you don't have the apple, or time to prepare it, that's ok, just sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar over the surface as a topping. It will still taste amazing, warm, out of the oven.

Bake in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes, until the surface looks cooked. Insert a cake skewer into the middle of the cake to check if it is cooked. The skewer should be clean when it comes out. My cake needed about 40 minutes but my oven isn't as hot as some.

Every now and then, I think we are allowed a trip down memory lane. This is mine for the moment. Thanks for indulging me.

Happy baking.

Warmest wishes,

Pauline