Apple, Rose and White Chocolate Cake

When I was asked if I'd like to bake some cakes as samples for Liskeard's Fine Food event a couple of weeks ago, I had to come up with something that would be tasty, quick to bake, could be easily cut into smallish pieces and most importantly included chocolate. As apples were in season, I felt honour bound to include these too. Eat Your Books came up trumps again and gave me sticky maple-apple traybake from Linda Collister's How to Bake from the 2nd series of The Great British Bake Off. I didn't have any maple syrup, but I did have rose syrup and this I thought would go exceedingly well with apples. I therefore omitted some of the flavourings that were used in the original recipe as I didn't want to overwhelm the rose. In addition to making my usual adjustments with flour etc, I substituted white chocolate chips for the walnut pieces and omitted the additional egg whites.

This is what I did:

• Sifted 275g flour (half wholemeal, half white) into a bowl with 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt.
• Peeled, cored and chopped 400g Dorset windfall apples - one of the spoils from our recent Glastonbury trip.
• Folded these through the flour to stop them browning.
• In another bowl whisked 150g light muscovado sugar together with 125ml sunflower oil.
• Added 1 tsp vanilla extract and 4 tbsp rose syrup then whisked some more.
• Whisked in 2 duck egg yolks, keeping the whites separate in a third bowl.
• Made a well in the flour and poured the egg mixture in. Stirred gently from the middle outwards to mix the ingredients together.
• Whisked the egg whites until stiff then folded them into the batter.
• Scraped this into a 9" square cake mould and baked at 180C for 30 minutes.
• Left in the mould to cool for a while then turned out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

• Creamed 75g unsalted butter with 75g light muscovado sugar until light and fluffy.
• Beat in 175g full fat cream cheese until just incorporated.
• Stirred in 3 tbsp of rose syrup.
• Spread onto the cooled cake.
• Cut into 36 squares.

This bake got a lot of positive feedback, which was of course very gratifying. It was very appley with a just a hint of rose. The cream cheese topping with again a hint of rose and slight saltiness from the cheese gave a lushness to the cake which raised it to a higher plain than a simple traybake. It had a nice soft texture and was very light. The chunky bits of white chocolate had caramelised slightly giving a delicious toffee apple flavour - all the fun of the fair.

It's birthday time. Tea Time Treats is one year old and we are helping Karen of Lavander and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked to celebrate with cake. This is my contribution, simple but scrumptious and well worthy of a birthday celebration, especially if you imagine a candle stuck in each piece.

Waste is one of my pet hates. I have always tried to avoid wasting anything and get really cross at the amount of electrical equipment that we have to send to land fill because we no longer have repair shops. When it comes to food, I really can't bear the thought of throwing anything away. One of my main drivers for having an allotment is so we can make compost, thus turning anything we can't actually eat into food for the soil. With this in mind and to support the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, Kate of Turquoise Lemons  started a monthly No Waste Food Challenge. This month the theme is apples and as the apples I used were windfalls which would otherwise have gone to waste, I am submitting my cake to this month's host, Elizabeth's Kitchen.

As apples are very much in season now, I am submitting this to Simple and in Season, a monthly challenge from Ren of Fabulicious Food that I try to enter where I can.

I'm also submitting this to Javelin Warrior's Made with Love as everything, including the rose syrup, was made from scratch.