Spiced Apple Tea Loaf - A Random Recipe

 I am a miserable git on a Monday morning, well I'm a miserable git most of the time, depending on who you speak to, but more so on a Monday morning.

Standard cures are to be on holiday or failing that; coffee. However, arriving at work this Monday morning, I had a very pleasant surprise awaiting me in the form of a bushel (always wanted to use that word ) load of apples which cheered me up no end.

Recently I have been formulating a plan for thievery that would make Mr Ocean look like an amateur with my eye being on the rosy red fruit of a glorious apple tree on someones front lawn near my house. However, before I purchased a balaclava and a stepladder, I got wind that a colleague of mine had an apple tree, so I asked for a few with plans to make a pie, I did not expect to end up with half a tree, so I have lots of lovely apple cookery ahead.

As luck would have it, Dom's Random Recipe challenge this month is to use local ingredients and randomly pick a recipe based on that. Heading to the Good Food Website, I typed apple into the search bar and used a random number generator to pick a recipe. Number 5 was selected out of 306 which was... a Spiced Apple Tea Loaf.

Now this here recipe doesn't contain any tea, so how it is a tea loaf is beyond me and saying it goes well with a cup of tea does not make it a tea loaf, but no matter.

The recipe employs no major different cake making methods but the times stated on the recipe are a bit off. The addition of apple into the mix is going to cause havoc and stop this from being a quick bake. My oven took a further 40 minutes to fully cook it and I am not at all convinced that turning the oven down is a necessary step but I will leave you to judge that with your own ovens. do pu the foil on though because the apples on top do start to sizzle if not.

The end result is exactly what it says on the tin, A moist spicy apply cake that will go spot on with a nice cup of Rosy Lee. Lovely stuff

Ingredients
175g light muscavado sugar
175g Butter
3 large eggs
1 eating apple
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g mixed dried fruits
85g ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
175g plain flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
splash of lemon or orange juice
1 tbsp marmalade or apricot jam

Method
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Stir in the dried fruits, vanilla extract and grate in one half of the apple.
Mix the flour, spices, baking powder and a pinch of salt together.
Fold into the batter.
Pour into a lined, 900g loaf tin and level out.
Slice the other half of the apple and dip in the juice, place on top of the cake.
Sprinkle over another tbsp of sugar.
Bake in a preheated oven for 45 minutes at 180C/160C (fan)
After 45 minutes turn the oven down to 140C/120C (fan) and cover the cake with foil.
Bake for a further 45 minutes.
Leave to cool in the tin.
Serve and Enjoy.