Spring this year is quite spectacular and my pear tree is heavily swagged with generous sprigs of creamy blossom. It is a fleeting delight, as the little petals are already being blown adrift by the strong westerly breeze and speckling the garden like fat snowflakes.
I had a craving for a good, filling cake, the kind you need after 3pm, when lunch is a distant memory and dinner is a long way off. I had four ancient apples to use up. Wrinkled and soft (a reproachful reminder that I should have eaten them weeks ago), they were peeled, cored and sliced, loosely following this BBC Food recipe here for Dorset apple cake. The cores and peelings I put out in a quiet spot for the birds and already the blackbird has been visiting that corner.
I tweaked the recipe a little; I accidentally added an extra ounce of flour as I am using a tablespoon to measure out ingredients (my old Salter weighing scales have finally given up), I didn’t have soft brown sugar so I used castor, and I layered the slices at the bottom of the dish, Tart Tatin style, because the pattern looked so pleasing.
Then the batter was slopped all over it and more sugar sprinkled on top.
It came out far larger than I anticipated; it is a rather plain looking and stodgy ‘fill you up’ cake, which is, after all, what I wanted. I have frozen half of it, as I cannot possibly eat that much cake this week and it won’t keep as well as a fruit cake. But it does go nicely with a cup of tea.
I took a slice out with me last Sunday, when I cycled out for a quick solo sketching trip at a nearby church.
It’s taken me twelve years to feel like myself again after everything that’s happened, but this year I really think I’ve turned a corner and I’m enjoying doing the things I used to love again.
