Turning leaves, colder winds, crisp mornings and rain that smells like goodbye — autumn is once again upon us and we’re really happy to have it. There are many fruit and vegetables that can claim the title of ultimate autumn food. That ultimate autumn food is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. For us, however, apples somehow spell autumn more clearly and deliciously than any other fruit or vegetable.
The amount of things you could make from or with apples is astounding. You’ve got pies and cakes, of course, but you can also bake them on their own or in dough, or shred them to add to a healthy salad, mash them for apple sauce, jam or apple treacle. Apples are great.
We didn’t get any apples from our garden this year. We haven’t had apples since our one surviving apple tree threw in the towel about four years ago. The new one we bought this spring succumbed to the summer heat — which is why it’s safest to plant trees in late autumn. Yet we buy apples and, now that it’s apple season, people give us apples from their gardens.
This is how we ended up with three apples from three different varieties and no one willing to eat them raw any longer. There was a Granny Smith, a Red Delicious, and a Gala. Clearly, the situation called for an apple dessert. And because we like the simple things in life — tart Tatin is delicious but it sounds like a lot of work — I had just the recipe.
Apple cake:
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar, granulated (it’s about 80 g, because we don’t like things too sweet)
1 cup flour + 1 tsp baking powder (or half-and-half baking powder and sodium bicarbonate)
1/4 cup sunflower oil (or whatever seed oil you have)
3 medium apples, shredded on the largest-hole side of the shredder
cinnamon to sprinkle the apples
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional) It’s richer with them but I didn’t have any on hand.
Process:
Pre-heat oven to 180 C/350 F.
Peel and shred apples, sprinkle cinnamon, set aside
Beat eggs and sugar into submission and fluffiness with a mixer or by hand if you have strong hands.
Add flour.
Add the apples and mix with a spoon, pour into lightly buttered pan.
Bake for about half an hour or until golden and set, and enjoy. Of course it will be just as moist and flavourful with one variety of apple but the three-variety thing adds a certain fanciness, also known — fancily — as je ne sais quoi, to the cake.
Yumm. Thank you, Irina.
My mother used to have a Gravenstein, quite an uncommon variety in Australia, tangy but not quite as sour as a Granny Smith and touch of redness. Most of her fruit ended up being eaten by cockatoos, who descended like something out of Albert Hitchcocks “The Birds”.