Easy French Apple Cake

Apples are the one crop our orchard reliably produces, and apple cake is a delicious way to use a few up. This is a very simple, very basic apple cake, of the sort that French home bakers favour.

Ingredients
120 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
125 g flour
1/4 cup canola oil
3-4 apples

Method

1. Heat the oven to 160C.
2. Oil a 20 cm spring form tin and line the base with baking paper.
3. Peel, core and dice apples.
4. Mix together all the ingredients except the apple.
5. Add the apples to the batter and stir to combine.
6. Tip the batter into the cake tin and smooth it out a bit, making a shallow well in the centre (so you don't get a volcano like I did).
7. Cook for 40 minutes.
8. Cool on a rack in the tin for 10 minutes, then tip out to fully cool.

 Homegrown Reine de Reinette and Red Delicious apples.

The eggs were supplied by a local dairy farmer who calls at the house twice a week. The flour came from Farine du Berry and is available in the Intermarché supermarket in Yzeures sur Creuse. If you don't grow your own apples I recommend the organic fruit from Fruits O Kalm, the commercial orchard on the outskirts of Preuilly. They come to the market in Preuilly on Saturdays and sell juice, apple sauce (bottles of stewed puréed apple) and a range of apple varieties.

Organic cold pressed canola oil is available from a local producer who comes to some of the specialist gourmet markets in the area.

 

Other apple cake recipes on the blog:

Simple French Apple Upsidedown Cake

Gateau Titou aux pommes

An Update from the Kouign Amann Test Kitchen

Stone ground flour from the Berry.

Yum

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