Quick Apple & Walnut Cake

This recipe was given to me by one of my mother’s group friends at one of our very first meetings… it is so quick and simple to make that it’s great for when you are time poor, or have run out of butter and have too many apples in the fruit bowl ~ which was the case for me this weekend.

Ingredients

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp salt
• 3 eggs
• ¼ cup caster sugar
• 1½ cups of brown sugar (tightly packed)
• ¼ cup water
• ½ cup light olive oil
• 1½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup of walnuts (approx. 140g) coarsely chopped (or pecans if you prefer)
• 5 apples peeled & cut into 1cm pieces (pears can be used as an alternative or approx. 10 canned pear halves well-drained)
• Icing sugar for dusting

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 150C
2. Butter or spray a non-stick round cake dish (preferably fluted as the cake will only take 1hr to cook… much quicker!)
3. Whisk together the flour, bicarb, spices and salt in a bowl
4. In a separate bowl whisk up the 3 eggs and add the sugars, water, oil and vanilla extract and mix together thoroughly
5. Combine the 2 mixtures together slowly then add the nuts and fold through and finally fold through the apples or pears
6. Pour the mixture into your cake tin and cook on 150C for 1hr and 30mins or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
7. Allow to cool for 10mins in the tin and then turn out and sprinkle with icing sugar

Oh smell the spicy aroma wafting through the house… might just have to enjoy a little slice now!

This cake can also be frozen for up to 2 weeks and heated up as a yummy pudding with custard!