My 6 years old son loves this cake. We recently made it for a family celebration and he named it 'the best cake ever'. He praised it so much that I felt compelled to make it again (not good parenting skills, I know). It is full of apples so at least you are getting the fruit in (or so I say to myself...) You need:
225g of soft butter
500 g apples cut in little cubes
225 g sugar
225 self raising flour
30 g ground almonds
2 teaspoons baking soda
3 eggs
one lemon
Topping: 3 tablespoons of caster sugar and 3 tablespoons of icing sugar
Preheat the over at 180 degrees.
Mix the apples with the juice of half a lemon so that they do not get brown.
Cream the butter and sugar (by hand or with electric whisker). Add the lemon zest. Then add the eggs, one at a time, alternating with three spoonfuls of flour (mixed with the baking soda) until all the flour is in. Finally add the ground almonds. Stir the apples in.
Put the mixture into a greased and lined cake tin (25-35 cms approx). Sprinkle two table spoons of caster sugar on top and bake for 1 hour (check after 50 minutes to be on the safe side). As with all moist cakes, you need to wait for 10-15 minutes to take the cake out of the tin. Once it is on the serving plate (and while it is still warm) sprinkle the additional tablespoon of caster sugar. When it is even colder sprinkle the icing sugar on top (through a sift).
This cake it lovely when it is served warm. My children like it on its own though it is also very nice with cream or ice-cream.
The children did most of the work except cutting the apples and dealing with the oven. I had to stop them from touching the tin while the cake was cooling off as their patience was running shorter and shorter...