Grate apple & raspberry crumble cake

Servings:

It would be remiss of me not to include this recipe in our collection of sweeties, as it throws everything I thought I knew about cake-baking out the window, and because when I first shared it with the people of Australia on morning telly, it went absolutely ballistic. It’s Bulgaria’s gift to baking, where the most complex process required is grating. Like the ostentatious arrangement of animal print-on-print at Russian restaurants, this cake probably shouldn’t work … but somehow, it does. Here’s why: as the grated apple mixture stews and bakes, it releases just enough liquid to bind the dry ingredients together into a crumbly consistency that yields a surprisingly light, logic-AND-gravity-defying crumble-cake mash-up.

Instructions

Place the butter in the freezer for at least 2 hours or preferably overnight (see Tips).
When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Line the base of a 20–22 cm (8–8½ inch) springform cake tin and grease the sides with butter (or cooking spray).
Combine the semolina, sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt in a bowl. Toss about with your hands to evenly distribute, or use a wooden spoon if you must.
Peel, quarter, core and coarsely grate the apples into a separate bowl, stirring in the vanilla bean paste and lemon juice to stop the apple browning, and to add to the juiciness. Stir in the frozen berries to combine.
Take the butter out of the freezer and coarsely grate one-third of it across the base of the cake tin. Scoop out a cup of the dry ingredients and sprinkle these across the bottom of the cake tin. (Yes, it will look like the weirdest thing you’ve ever put in your cake tin.)
Spread half the apple mixture on top, then sprinkle with another cup’s worth of dry ingredients. Grate another third of the butter on top (if it feels like it’s starting to melt, consider using some baking paper as a handle, or popping the butter back into the freezer for 15 minutes or so).
Spread the remaining apple mixture over the top, then the remaining dry ingredients. Scatter the pecans over the top. Finish with the last of the butter.
Pop the cake tin on a baking tray and bake for 50–55 minutes, or until the top of the cake is slightly burnished, just before the nuts begin to burn.
Remove from the oven.
Allow the cake to cool in the tin, before releasing and removing the tin.
Serve the cake with cream or yoghurt. Prepare for it to be crumbly, yet light, and for your guests to be amazed.

Notes

Tips

You can use frozen raspberries, blueberries, even strawberries here. Frozen berries hold their shape well in baking recipes, but you can totally use fresh if need be; just be prepared for more in the way of mush.

Freezing the butter makes it far easier to grate. If you’ve started on the recipe and realise you forgot to freeze some, then all is not lost!

Chop the butter as small as you can and pop it into the freezer as soon as it’s chopped — that way it’ll be far easier to handle and distribute evenly.

If all this ‘layering’ talk has you confused, the order into the tin is: butter, dry, apples, dry, butter, apples, dry, pecans, butter.

If your oven has a problem with uneven heat (like mine!), once the cake is cooked, turn the oven off, turn the cake tin around 180 degrees and leave it in the oven for an extra 5 minutes, to let the residual heat help even out the browning on top.

You don’t have a springform cake tin? Use a pie dish and scoop the cake out as more of a crumble.

Subs

No self-raising flour? You can using plain (all-purpose) flour instead, subbing 2 tablespoons of the flour with baking powder.

If your butter is unsalted, add an extra 1/2 teaspoon salt flakes.

For a plant-based cake, you could use olive oil spread or even just oil instead of the butter, but you’ll end up with a crumblier result.

From Better Cooking (Murdoch Books)