Upon first making this recipe, I originally baked this one larger cake, with a caramel apple topping and sauce. However, although delicious, I just felt that it still needed a few little tweaks here and there. I tend to prefer making tray bakes like brownies and blondies over full sized cakes recently, because they’re generally a bit easier, require lets mixture and are the perfect individual portion size. I was really pleased with the flavour and texture of the cake; it’s beautifully sweet and so moist from the apple puree; but I jazzed things up a bit by lining the baking tray with some sliced apples for a kinda’ upside down cake like effect. Once baked, these have a deliciously soft and gooey texture.. as well as also looking quite pretty too!
After watching the final episode of Bake Off, I was definitely sad to think that I have to now wait a whole other YEAR until the next season, but as always, I was left inspired to get into the kitchen and start baking! I wanted to bake something to celebrate the end of this series and also something nice and festive for this time of year! Now that Halloween is over, there might just be a little less pumpkin around here.. but no doubt this will now be replaced with apples! Apple puree is a great ingredient to use as a butter or oil replacement in baking and it gives cakes a really lovely sweet and fruity flavour! You can buy it in lots of health food stores, but it’s really easy to make your own at home too. I just peeled and cooked up some apples on the hob, then simply blended them into a puree in my food processor- this really reminds me of baby food actually. Quick, easy and delicious! It’s also a great way to reduce the caloric content of recipes, so you can give some of your favourite sweet treats a little more macro friendly twist!
These make for a super tasty Winter warming treat for a dessert or snack with afternoon tea and I think will certainly be making an appearance amongst my snack table at my Christmas Party! That’s another thing that I’ve recently discovered a love for.. Party planning and catering! We recently hosted a Halloween party and I feel my inner Monica (from Friends) come out! I literally LOVE hosting parties, preparing the food and decorating my apartment! I just find such joy in preparing food and cooking for people.. I don’t really know why haha. I don’t think I would feel the same if I had to cater for really large numbers of people though, I imagine that would be a lot more stressful; so I very much admire the people who are able to pull that off!
