Torta di Mele via WritingInTheKitchen.Com ~ @WritingInTheKitchen

Torta di Mele (Apple Cake)

I remember making a version of this apple cake back when I lived in Positano, under the guidance (and occasional eagle eye) of my late fiance’s mother. I had a notebook filled with her recipes, but what with the multiple moves over the past four years I’ve mislaid it. I can only hope it’s in storage somewhere because those recipes are worth many times their weight in gold simply because I am so emotionally attached to them. They remind me of happier and gentler times.

I also made this cake when I was living in England; the little cottage I rented had three Cox apple trees in the garden, and that year I picked the apples off the trees and set them in rows in the attic to keep over the autumn and through the winter. You have to place the apples so they don’t touch each other, and use up (or eat) any apples that are slightly bruised because they don’t keep. I made jars of apple sauce to give away as presents that year, and made many apple cakes and apple pies. I wanted to try my hand at making cider, but I have no idea what it entails and so I thrust it away, declaring it a future project. It’s one I still haven’t gotten around to, but I shall.

This year I picked out some Shimla apples to make this cake with; it’s about as local as it gets, I think. Shimla apples are sweet and not very tart; they have a dark skin that is almost maroon in colour, and they are incredibly delicious. If you can’t get Cox apples to bake with, then I recommend the Gala apples. I love Gala apples (even though they are upstarts who have dethroned Cox apples as Britain’s favourite apple) for their delicious vanilla-tinted floral flavour; they are (in my opinion) the most perfect apples with which to bake.

If you bake this cake (and I strongly encourage you to), you can serve it warm with some pouring cream or you can make a simple pouring icing (mine is just a simple glace icing) to enrobe the cake with before devouring. If you can’t be bothered with a glace icing, simply dust the top of the cake with icing sugar.

Torta di Mele via WritingInTheKitchen.Com ~ @WritingInTheKitchen

Torta di Mele (Apple Cake)

Recipe: Manu’s Menu

Ingredients

3 apples peeled and sliced

2 eggs

200 gms flour

100 gms butter melted

180 gms sugar

150 ml milk

1 lemon zest

1 pinch of salt

2 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing sugar to dust

Method

1) Grease and flour a 22 cm (9 inch) tin and set aside. (I used a bundt tin because I just did.) Preheat the oven.

2) Beat the eggs with the sugar before adding the rest of the wet ingredients and whisking well.

3) Add the dry ingredients bit by bit, whisking all the while.

4) Fold in the apples.

5) Bake at 180C for 45 minutes or until done.

6) Serve warm.

1 Comment

  • Genevieve 13th December 2017 at 11:51 pm

    Beautiful!

    Reply

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