Apple Loaf Cake with Nuts and Chocolate

Aha! You thought I’d gone away for the summer but I have one last trick up my sleeve before taking my self imposed August blog break.  I realised I still hadn’t entered English Mum’s Big Bake Off and that this Apple Loaf Cake with Nuts and Chocolate was just the ticket.

This is the cake that I made for the foodbloggers’ Masterchef event at the Miele showroom earlier this month. I brazenly lied to Mr Egg and Mr Toad that the cake only required 30 minutes in the oven, I knew full well it needed a good 45 but since I didn’t watch the show I didn’t realise contestants normally only get 60 minutes and had only skim read my email with the timings absorbing just the bare facts “you’ll be cooking between 2 and 4pm” blah blah blah.

It was with mild panic therefore that I realised 90 minutes before leaving the house that a) my apples in the fruit bowl had gone a funny colour and b) we had 60 minutes not 2 hours to make two items. My other item if you’ve not seen the previous post was Hazelnut French Macarons which were a foolhardy enough thing on their own.

Still, all that’s history now and it worked out fine. I’m not sure if Egg and Toad were just being polite or sarcastic when they said that the good thing about cake mix was that it tasted good even if it wasn’t cooked. They should know – cheeky so and so’s kept dipping spoons in my bowl throughout!

Anyway, just to prove that this cake recipe does work, here is the cooked version for your delectation.

Nutty Apple Loaf going into gorgeous all singing all dancing oven

 

Apple Loaf Cake with Nuts and Chocolate

Adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf

I have made a few changes to the Hummingbird version of this recipe; by using wholemeal flour instead of plain, using all walnuts instead of mixed nuts and by using double the amount of chocolate (why ever not?).  I’ve also omitted a stage where you are supposed to leave batter hanging around overnight as it seems pointless to me and I cannot imagine the cake would take any better if you did.

Finally, I made the version in the photographs using the caramel drops from Hotel Chocolat.  They tasted awesome with the apple but if you cannot get hold of these you can use normal baking chocolate chips.

 

Ingredients

175g softened unsalted butter