Baking a Dorset apple cake with windfall fruit

An orchard autumn made for baking

By the middle of October, the grass beneath a mature apple tree in Dorset is a different place from the lawn it was in July. It is a bruised, sweet-smelling carpet of fruit, and there is only so much chutney any household can reasonably get through. Windfalls — the apples that drop before or during picking, often small, sharp or lightly bruised — are the honest heart of a proper Dorset apple cake. They cook down soft and fragrant, they carry cinnamon beautifully, and they cost nothing but a walk down the garden with a bucket. This is the cake I bake when the kitchen windows are steamed up and the log basket is full: deep, moist, dark with brown sugar and finished with a crunchy demerara lid.

Sorting and preparing your windfalls

Not every apple on the ground deserves a place in the tin. Work through the crop with a sharp knife and a bit of ruthless good sense.

• Use: firm fruit with sound flesh, even if the skin is speckled, scabby or slightly bruised. Cut away every damaged patch generously.
• Discard: anything soft, brown, fermented-smelling or pierced by wasps. A single rotten apple will taint the whole cake.
• Wash and dry the fruit, then peel, core and slice it about 5mm thick. You need roughly 350g of prepared slices — around four or five medium apples.
• Keep a few back for the blackbirds and the wasps at the far end of the orchard. A little untidiness under the trees is good for the soil and for the wildlife.

If your windfalls are cookers rather than eaters, all the better: their sharpness cuts through the sugar. A handful of crab apples peeled into the mix will do the same trick.

What you will need

A 20cm round deep cake tin is the right size here — this is a substantial farmhouse cake, not a delicate sponge. Line the base and sides with baking parchment and butter it well, because the fruit makes the crumb tender and prone to sticking. Set the oven to 180°C (160°C fan, Gas 4).

• 225g self-raising flour, or half wholemeal and half white for a nuttier crumb
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp mixed spice
• ¼ tsp fine salt
• 225g soft light brown sugar
• 225g unsalted butter, very soft
• 3 medium eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tbsp milk or natural yoghurt
• 350g prepared windfall apple slices
• 75g sultanas or raisins
• Finely grated zest of one lemon
• 2 tbsp demerara sugar, for the top

Bringing the batter together

• Beat the butter and light brown sugar for a good four or five minutes until pale, fluffy and noticeably lighter in colour. Do not rush this stage; it is what gives the cake its soft, even crumb.
• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each, with a spoonful of the weighed flour to stop the mixture curdling.
• Sift in the remaining flour, baking powder, cinnamon, mixed spice and salt. Fold gently with a large metal spoon, then loosen with the milk or yoghurt. Stop as soon as the flour disappears.
• Toss the apple slices, sultanas and lemon zest with a tablespoon of extra flour — this helps them stay suspended rather than sinking to the base.
• Spoon half the batter into the tin and level it. Scatter over half the apple mixture, then cover with the remaining batter and finish with the rest of the apples, pressing them in lightly so the top looks rumpled and generous. Sprinkle the demerara sugar evenly across the surface.

Into the oven and out again

Bake on the middle shelf for 55 to 65 minutes. The cake will rise, darken to a deep treacle brown and smell of warm spice and caramel long before it is ready. At 50 minutes, test with a skewer pushed into the centre — it should come out with a few moist crumbs but no wet batter. If the top is browning too quickly, lay a sheet of parchment loosely over it.

Leave the cake in the tin for twenty minutes before turning it out, then cool it on a wire rack. It slices best when barely warm, though it will keep for four or five days in an airtight tin, and improves for a day or two as the apple flavour settles.

Serving, storing and small variations

Dorset apple cake belongs on a harvest lunch table: thick slices with mature Cheddar and a few pickled walnuts, or simply warm with clotted cream and a mug of strong tea. For a lighter finish, dust with icing sugar once cool instead of the demerara crust.

Once you know the basic recipe, it bends easily to what the orchard gives you. Swap 50g of the flour for porridge oats, add 50g of chopped walnuts, or replace the sultanas with chopped dried apricots. A tablespoon of dark rum or apple brandy stirred into the fruit is a fine thing on a cold evening. Wrap a whole cooled cake in parchment and then in a clean tea towel, and it will travel happily to a village hall, a neighbour's kitchen or the boot of the car on the way to a harvest supper.