Saturday 2 November - Sticky Toffee Apple Cake with Apple Ice Cream

Lots of apples to use up, and not much to cook for supper as a brisket was slow cooking, so we decided to make a nice pudding. The apple cake we have made before, but we also found an apple ice cream to serve with it in a Skye Gingell Book.

The ice cream started with raw cox and russett apples which were blended along with a lemon until smooth.

Sugar and double cream were added to the puree along with a glug of Calvados and it was blended again briefly.

 

The mixture was then churned until frozen and popped into the freezer while the cake and sauce were made.

The cake was a James Martin recipe - the only change I made was to use Cox apples instead of Bramleys as that's what we had in the house.

The apples were cooked in butter and water until soft and then beaten until smooth and some calvados was added.

The puree had a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda added to it before it was beaten into a basic sponge mix made with eggs, brown sugar, butter , golden syrup and flour. The cake was decorated with thin slices of apple - the thinness was very important - last time we made this cake the apple slices sank as they were too thick and heavy.

 

Once the cake was cooked it was left to cool while the caramel sauce was made.

The sauce was equal quantities of butter and brown sugar, melted together and then double cream and calvados were added to it.

We served the ice cream and cake with the sauce poured over, and sprinkled over some caramelised almonds to add a bit of crunch.