English Apple and Blackberry (Birthday) Cake

This started life as a Nigel Slater recipe which I employed to use up the large number of Newton Wonder apples which fell from a tree in our garden. Every day of October, one could pick up 10-15 fallen apples, most in good nick but a few with bruises or pecked by the birds or worms. These latter apples would be used up in delicious cakes and crumbles, or frozen for later. I ended up bringing extra cake to events at college and in to work!

I'm trying to run down the freezer at the moment and I remembered I still had a few frozen apples. I didn't have quite enough for this cake so I went halves with some frozen blackberries, and it worked perfectly. So my advice would be to experiment and try different kinds of fruit; you're bound to make something new and exciting every time. The occasion of the cake today was my lovely fiancee's birthday :)

Ingredients:

• 130g butter
• 130g golden caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 130g plain flour
• 1 large eating apple, cored and sliced
• 100g blackberries
• ground cinnamon
• 2 tbsp demerara sugar

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line the base of a square 20-24cm cake tin with a piece of greaseproof paper large enough to come up past the sides. Cream together the butter and sugar, then add the eggs and again beat well. Sift in the flour and baking powder. Scrape the mixture into the lined tin, and cut off any excess paper from above the sides. Drop the apples and blackberries on top and scatter with a dash of ground cinnamon and the demerara sugar. Bake for 45 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Leave for 10 minutes and then serve warm; eat within 2 days for best flavour.