It’s Bramley Apple Week this week so thought it a good opportunity to share a nice apple cake recipe which is perfect for these cold days.

I made this before Christmas when my lovely neighbour came over with a massive bag of wind fall apples from his tree. I didn’t know that this tree even existed but I am now benefitting from it bearing more fruit than my neighbours know what to do with as I made a couple of these cakes and some spicy apple chutney as Christmas prezzies.

I ripped the recipe out of my monthly Delicious Magazine a few months back and knew that was one to go to: sticky apple and gingerbread pecan loaf cake.

Rather than reproduce it, you can find the recipe here. I did make a couple of amendments. Firstly, the apples I have are cooking apples, but this definitely didn’t affect the final result- so it would work wonderfully with Bramleys. Oh I also left the skins on. Lazy but why not? Secondly, stem ginger is rarer than hen’s teeth here in Leigh, so I used 2.5 tsp of ground ginger per loaf instead. Obviously it didn’t have the sticky texture that the stem ginger would have given it, but it was still blinkin’ tasty.

I made a double quantity so that I could give one back to the neighbours as a thank you. The other went in the freezer which is a brave new world for me. I don’t think I have ever frozen a cake before, but I was trying very hard not to turn into a cake before Christmas!

Saying that, it came out of the freezer after a couple of weeks and I can report that no cake was harmed during my moment of madness! It is a great everyday cake: the apple feels virtuous while the nuts make it seem a bit more of a treat.

Oh and sorry about the lack of pictures. I did take some but they seem to have been lost in the post Christmas photo clearout!