My Dorset apple cake is spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg and laden with unpeeled apple slices. Just add Dorset cream.
What is Dorset apple cake?
Dorset apple cake at a glance seems to be one of those regional specialties that you’ve never heard of, unless that’s where you come from. But in fact, it’s almost a National Treasure, at least in Dorset: in 2006 a local baker’s apple cake won the award for the county’s ‘National Dish’.
It’s a true ‘heritage’ product, baked in Dorset’s farms and orchards for probably centuries (earliest printed recipe comes from 1896). It’s simple, it uses local ingredients and it’s frugal: in wartime bakers relied on the apple juice moistening the crumb with margarine let alone butter being scarce, and the sprinkling of sugar on top covering up the shortage of it in the batter.
Have apples, will bake
As with many regional dishes, there is not one right recipe for the cake. In fact it’s completely non-prescriptive, as long as it has apples in the mix and a brown sugar crunch on top. The most common versions, including the winner from 2006, are for a thick batter, sometimes rub-in, other times more resembling a pound cake.
Apples can be stewed or fresh, diced or sliced, peeled or not. Some bakers use Bramleys, others go for eating apples which won’t turn too soft and mushy whilst baking.
The spice is not obligatory and if added, it can be cinnamon, nutmeg or mixed spice. Some bakers add in raisins, often soaked in booze (presumably cider), and others grate in lemon zest or souse the apples in lemon juice. Anything, within reason, goes.
How I make my Dorset apple cake
I have trawled through various available recipes, but above all I wanted to get as close as possible to the cake I had in Swanage, from the Italian Bakery. I’m not sure about the Italian output but their Dorset apple cake was beyond divine. A little squidgy, a little gritty, with apple slices trailing between bites, a few raisins and the crunchy sugar top. Delicious.
And so my batter is made with wholemeal flour for the gritty texture, and if you can’t get fine wholemeal (aka Golden Flour), sift wholemeal coarse flour to remove the thickest bran.
I flavour the batter with plenty of cinnamon and a little freshly grated nutmeg.
You can melt the butter and then just whisk all the ingredients together, but I cream butter with sugar first for a little airiness.
Eggs are added to the butter mix and then the flour. It’s quite thick, dark and sticky.
Apples for the cake
As I mentioned already, cooking apples such as Bramley will soften and break down in the cake. I find the ordinary, firmer eating apples much better, retaining their shape and texture.
Whichever is your favourite variety, or cheap and abundant, that’s what you should go for. I like Pink Lady but Coxes or Braeburns are also nice and slightly tangy which might be a pleasing factor.
I don’t bother peeling them, only slice quite thinly. But chunks or dice are perfectly acceptable too.
It’s a little tricky mixing them in because the batter is so thick.
But don’t worry – there are recipes saying make a layer of apples in the middle of the cake or on top so really anything goes.
Tin for the cake
My Italian Bakery cake was cut into thick rectangular bars, off an enormous tray, presumably. And so I keep the shapes baking it in a square tin. If you’d rather have a round, classic cake, use a 23 cm cake tin.
The obligatory sugar sprinkle benefits from mixing the sugar with cinnamon – and the sugar should be demerara or light muscovado.
It’s quite a long bake, up to an hour, as it’s such dense batter full of apples.
By all means serve it warm but I actually find it gets better on the next day or even two days later: less crumbly, more sticky and moist.
But as it has apples in it, it better get eaten within three days, which is not at all a hardship.
More apple cake recipes
Apple cake with spiced, cooked Granny Smith chunks sunk into a cinnamony soured cream sponge and finished with a crisp brown sugar and oat crumble. No mixer needed, the cake is reliably moist and perfect warm with clotted cream or ice cream.
Spiced brown apple cake with cocoa, probably the easiest apple cake recipe of the 'mix and bake' kind. It's fragrant with cinnamon and cloves, dark brown with cocoa and dotted with pale chunks of apples.
Old fashioned apple cake with brown sugar frosting. A simple and delicious apple cake with apple chunks cut into the batter; easy to make and even easier to eat, best warm.
More traditional English pudding recipes
We call it bramble crumble, you might know it as blackberry crisp. It’s a delicious dessert, put together in minutes, divine with a scoop of ice cream. Brambles, wild blackberries grow everywhere in the UK and in a good summer they are juicy, sweet and free to foragers.
Classic rhubarb fool recipe, ready in minutes. A traditional English dessert, this rhubarb fool is made with rhubarb puree and whipped cream.
Sticky toffee pudding cake topped with nuts and a toffee sauce. Dates and dark brown sugar are key to a sticky toffee, and it’s deservedly considered to be the nation’s most beloved dessert.