Applefest last week

Apple publishing have produced a bucket of little "500 of X" books. This recipe is from the cupcake one. They were delicious and disappeared in one sitting

Recipe : apple sauce & cinnamon cupcakes

makes 12

115g (4oz) unsalted butter, softened

115g (4oz) caster sugar

115g (4oz) self-raising flour

2 eggs

115g (4oz) unsweetened apple sauce

3/4 tsp cinnamon

50g (2oz) chopped pecans **

75g (3oz) sultanas ≠

1 small red eating apple, thinly sliced

2 tbsp granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 175˚C (350˚F / Gas mark 4). Grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

Place the butter, sugar, flour and egg in a bowl and beat with electric whisk until smooth, about 2 - 3 minutes.

Stir in the apple sauce, cinnamon, pecans and sultanas.

Spoon the batter into the cups. Lay the apple slices on top and sprinkle with a little sugar.

Bake for 25 minutes. Remove tin from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes

Remove the cupcakes and cool on a rack. Serve warm.

Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months :)

Ruth's notes :

** I used 1/2 pecans and 1/2 walnuts

≠ Zack wanted chocolate chips so I made up 2/3 sultanas and 1/3 chocolate chips = total weight of 75g

I tripled the recipe and it made 25 large cupcakes (filled to the top). I didn't have enough apple sauce to triple, but it doesn't seem to have made a massive difference.

This is Nigella's Apple Kuchen recipe. It's not bad but it's not amazing. The base took a lot of work - kneading and allowing it to rise overnight, etc etc. It came out lovely and bready which you then top with the apple, eggy-custard topping and the all-spice, slivered almonds, etc. It looks great but wasn't sweet enough or apple-y enough for me. I wanted something more sticky... more sweet throughout. Gotta keep trying.

syruppy lemon cake trifle

One of those Nigella wow-ers. This is her lemon syrup loaf cake, sliced up (with double syrup to drench the cake), fresh raspberries on top and then a lime syllabub poured over, topped with toasted almonds. Lovely. Just found the syllabub a bit too bitter with the lime zest.

Almond Fig and Chocolate Cake

Keith was given the very decadent Unwrapped by a friend some years ago. It is incredibly decadent and so I don't make things from it terribly regularly, however, I have for some time now been eye-ing a recipe which has almonds, dried figs and chocolate in it. Today we had a wonderful group of friends for lunch and as I hadn't made any dessert I roped Keith and Zack into the manufacture of this fabulous cake. There's lots of grating and chopping and folding involved, so plenty for little hands to do. Unfortunately I didn't have any Amaretto, but it didn't seem to affect the taste enormously. The finished product was slightly overcooked (a bit brown on the edges), but lovely and crunchy from the fig seeds, and deliciously rich. We served it with chocolate icecream – chocolate overdose, but they'd recommended cream. Pity, I didn't have any.