Apple and Rhubarb Crumble Cake

Hello lovely readers!

Apologies again for the sporadic and neglectful manner I have been updating this blog! I have about 20 posts drafted and half finished so I hope to eventually get them all completed and published soon...maybe when my youngest goes to school in about 5 years?!?!?! Anyway, here's one I had to type up urgently before I forgot how I made it!

For those of you who are on Instagram, you might have seen this little beauty being created on the weekend. It was goooooooooooooooooood!!!

I served it with warm vanilla custard – I used this recipe as a base but used milk instead of cream, raw caster sugar instead of white (caramel flavour!), doubled the cornflour and used vanilla paste instead of extract. Worked a treat!

Ingredients:

- 100g butter, softened

- 50g  brown sugar

- 50g raw caster sugar (regular caster sugar is fine)

- 150g plain flour

- 50g cornflour

- 3 teaspoons baking powder

- 3 eggs

- 2 teaspoons of vanilla paste

- 2 teaspoons lemon zest

- 6 sticks of rhubarb (it was a bit less than a full bunch – I saved some to stew to go with my porridge for breakfast!)

- 2 granny smith apples

- ½ lemon

For the crumble:

- 125g plain flour

- 125g butter, cubed and keep cold in the fridge

- 50g brown sugar

- 50 g raw caster sugar

- 25 demerara sugar (you can use 125g of just one type of sugar if you like! I just used the combination of what I had and what I like.)

- 1 teaspoon vanilla paste

Method:

Preheat oven to 160-170 degrees Celsius.

Grease and line a 25cm spring form tin. You could use a smaller one but adjust the cooking time as it will be a higher cake.

For the crumble:

Mix together all of the ingredients aside from the demerara sugar in a food processor until it’s like chunky bread crumbs. Don’t over mix – it’s good to have little chunks of butter. You could do this by hand if you don’t want to use a food processor. Then add the demerara sugar and give one last quick mix. Set the crumble mix aside in the fridge to stay cold.

For the cake:

Cut the rhubarb into 1-2cm pieces and peel, core and cut the apples in to 2cm cubes. Toss the fruit together with 1 tablespoon of the caster sugar and a big squeeze of lemon juice. Set aside.

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric beater for several minutes until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs – do this very slowly so the mixture doesn't split! I usually add some of the flour in if it’s looking like it’s going to split. Add both flours and the lemon zest and beat until smooth. Finally add the baking powder and gently incorporate.

Poor the cake mixture in to the lined pan and spread out evenly.

Remove most of the liquid from the fruit and then add the fruit on top of the cake mixture.

Add the crumble mixture on top in a reasonably even manner.

Bake for 1-1 ¼ hours depending on your oven. You want the top to be nice and brown with a crunch, the centre to be cooked through and the base to be lovely and cooked. I cooked my cake for 1 and  ¼  hours at 160 degrees fan forced. Test with a skewer to be sure and keep an eye on it as you don't want it to burn if you have a super hot oven!  Leave to cool in tin. Then remove from tin, peel off the baking paper and serve at room temperature with warm custard or on it’s own.

Let me know if you try this one and if you enjoy it!!! It’s a large cake – we served 12 people and even froze two slices for another day.

Love Amy xoxo