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A cake loaf w/ fresh fruit… This isn’t my 1st try. To be honest: my overall experience is that a cake w/ fresh fruit likes to collapse due to too much fresh fruit – or to be flavorless & dry due to the lack of enough fresh fruit. Therefore I’m always skeptical when folding in fresh fruit into batter. (More than once recipes in books/blogs proved incorrect!).
However, this loaf w/ apples was really fine.
In my test series concerning loaf cakes I have 2 loafs so far w/ fresh fruit. There was the banana bread & now it’s the apple cake. The main difference between the versions is that in the banana bread I didn’t use any dairy products. It’s only butter & sugar & eggs & flour & mashed banana…
For my vanilla loaf as well as my orange loaf I had butter & sugar & eggs & flour & a „dairy“ component – so did I for my apple loaf. Concerning the „dairy“ component I used so far:
- mascarpone
- ricotta
- sour cream.
All is fine. The mascarpone adding some solidity, the ricotta some more lightness & the sour cream is pure freshness.
…& I always worked w/ butter!
Only once I tried oil instead of butter; it was my savoury loaf. Here it was oil & crème fraîche…
For the record:
I wasn’t so happy w/ oil instead of butter in a sweet cake beforehand because my experiments w/ oil resulted in soggy cakes more often than I liked it. Maybe it was always too much oil…
However, let’s start w/ the apple loaf!
There are the usual suspects…
Mainly:
- flour
- butter
- eggs
- sugar
- sour cream
- apples.
I had some green apples, rather tart apples. (These apples are all-season apples in my trusted food store.)
So now:
- The oven is preheated to 150° C w/ fan.
- The apples are peeled & trimmed & diced.
- Sugar is mixed w/ cinnamon.
- Sour cream is mixed w/ vanilla extract.
An electric handheld mixer combines butter, sugar & eggs. The mix goes into the flour.
We add the sour cream & finally fold in the diced apples.
The batter is ready now &…
…finds its new home in the baking tin.
After a oven session of about an hour the cake is ready to cool.
Enjoy!
- 200 g sugar
- 125 g butter
- 2 eggs
- 200 g all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 150 g sour cream 20%
- 2 apples about 200 g diced apple after trimming & peeling
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- a pinch of ground cinnamon
- a pinch of salt
- 150 g icing sugar
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp butter
- a loaf tin 25 cm
- an electric handheld mixer
- Preheat the oven to 150° C w/ fan.
- Line the loaf tin w/ baking paper - crosswise.
- Trim & peel & dice the apples.
- Combine sugar (incl. a pinch of salt) & butter w/ the electric handheld mixer until fluffy.
- Add eggs & mix until smooth.
- Add the flour mixed w/ the baking powder & the cinnamon & mix until well combined.
- Finally add sour cream, vanilla essence & mix...
- Fold in the diced apples.
- Pour the batter in the prepared loaf tin & let it bake in the oven for about 55-60 min.
- Make the famous test w/ the wooden pin...
- Let the cake cool down for about 10 min - then lift it out of the tin.
- Remove the baking paper carefully & let it cool completely on a cooling rack.
- Combine the icing sugar, the butter & the lemon juice until smooth & spoon all over the cake; let the icing get firm in the fridge (about 20 min).
Now we are dealing w/ the icing affair.
I tried lemony icing based on icing sugar several times, but… sometimes it got really runny. So now I added some butter to the icing – it worked fine. After a short time in the fridge the icing was perfect: soft, but firm. Not at all runny.
In general I like cake w/o icing – my credo: if a cake isn’t fine w/o any icing it’s not worth baking the cake.
The most simple way of icing a cake is just sprinkling sugar all over the cake. What might happen: the sugar melts into the cake… (So you’ll have to repeat the sugar sprinkling before the next serving!)
If doing an icing w/ icing sugar & some fruit juice (or any spirits!) I’d like to recommend to use some butter in the icing cream for firmness.
If you like chocolate icing just melt the chocolate & drown the cake in chocolate – make sure there’s enough space in your fridge for cooling! (I made my comments about ganache some weeks ago… Be sure I’ll work on ganache!)
…& there is buttercream: heavy, solid, filling, but delicious. Make sure that you’ll use it wisely, lightly, sparingly… (I cannot help, but I always think automatically of biscuit when thinking buttercream – not loaf cake…!)
I let the loaf rest on my kitchen counter carefully covered. The cake was fine, soft & fluffy even after some days.
The businesswoman w/ too many office hours thinks
I can hardly hold off… this delicious soft & fresh cake…
Where is my espresso?
