Easter Break

APPLE SHORTCAKE 

A short blog to give you this recipe for the upcoming Easter break. I saw Bill Grangers recipe for a Pear and Almond Shortcake in Delicious magazine, and modified it to suit my needs (more whole ingredients, less sugar, more what I actually had on hand, more yumminess). Using spelt and rapadura made it much browner than standardised white flour, but so much yummier. Adding another egg also gave it a lovely cakey but not texture. 

It's quick and fairly easy to make (as long as your shortcake pastry is cold, cold, cold you won't have problems).

We had this for lunch yesterday with lashings of vanilla scented whipped cream, but custard or ice cream would be just as fine. For those of you wanting a dairy free alternative to this, the Apple and Berry Cake in Coming Home to Eat - Wholefood for the Family would fit the bill. Oh and spectacularly good news, in that Coming Home to Eat has gone to re print. So all who have been emailing me looking for copies - hooray !!! It's on it's way !!

And if you're not into apples, what about the Walnut and Yoghurt cake from last easter? 

Wishing you a peaceful and joyous Easter break... x Jude

APPLE SHORTCAKE

My advice would be to look for the most flavourful apples - Mutsu and Golden Delicious would be my top options. Granny Smith's will do, but at the moment they can be quite tart. They should also be ripe - unripe apples won't give you much moisture, so if they don't weep about 2 tablespoons moisture, you might need to add a dash (2 tablespoons) of juice or water (but only if they look badly and obviously dry at the end of cooking when you take off the lid).  If you don't have berries, it will be fine - just add a bit more apple. Or Rhubarb (but you might need a bit more sugar with rhubarb). If you are using Rhubarb, you will need to add them to the apples to cook. If you have Calvados on hand, a generous splash of that would be mighty fine. 

The Shortcake Dough

125 g unsalted butter, soft

1/2 cup rapadura sugar

2 eggs

generous dash of natural vanilla extract (I like Heilala)

190gm white spelt flour (I like the Demeter Mill brand in Australia)

50g almond meal (or any other nut meal would be fine)

1 teaspoon baking powder

The Apple Filling

600g apples, peeled and quartered. Remove the core and cut into fine slices

30 g butter

1 tablespoon rapadura

splash natural vanilla extract

200g berries (frozen is fine)

grated zest of 1 lemon

handful of sliced or chopped almonds for the top

To Make the Dough: 

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy and thick (electric beaters or a wooden spoon). Add the eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla, flour, almond meal and baking powder, beating very slowly until it comes together. It will be a soft dough. Use a spatula to visually halve the mixture, then spatula each halve into a plastic bag, wrap and roughly pat into a disc and chill for at least 30 minutes.

To Make the Filling:

Add the butter and rapadura sugar to a 24cm fry pan. When melted add the apples. Cover and cook over a gentle heat for about 10 minutes until soft. The lid will keep those lovely juices in. Remove the lid, turn off the heat and add the berries, vanilla, lemon zest and a splash (1 tablespoon) of calvados if you have it. Set aside to cool - this is important, because the butter will set the liquid (to a degree) and will give the finished tart a lovely moistness.

Put it Together:

Pre heat the oven to 180c or 165 if fan forced.

Line a 24cm springform cake tin with baking paper, or simply butter the tin well, and dust with flour.

Roll 1 disc of pastry at a time between baking paper, using just a little bit of flour. You need to do this quite quickly and if it is cold enough it will be fine. Remember, between rolls you will need to stop, lift the paper off, sprinkle the pastry with a little flour, then replace the paper, turn it over, lift off the paper, sprinkle it with a little flour then replace the paper. This will allow the pastry to roll. Roll to 26cm and then immediately invert into the tin - some should come a little way up the side of the tin. If it breaks, just patch it up.  Place that in the freezer to chill while you roll the top out - but make that one  about 25cm diameter.

Place the fruit in pastry, invert the top pastry and peel off the paper. Seal the sides, sprinkle with the almonds and place in the oven. Cook for about 30 - 40 minutes or until the top is golden, but remembering when you see the top is golden, the sides and base may still need a few more minutes to cook through. 30 minutes should do it though.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes before removing the sides and serving.