Apple Cake — Irish Wishing Well

Baking an apple cake, I believe, puts me in touch with my ancestors. While following a traditional recipe, imitating what generations of women in my family have done - although likely by heart and more often, I think of them. I imagine their hands as I look at my own peeling the apples, measuring a pinch of salt, adding just a bit more of the ground gloves, and pressing the final mixture into the buttered cake pan.

And, I hope. I hope that I am doing it well and in a way that is almost ancestral instinctual as if the way of making this food is something I could have inherited from them. Cutting the cooled cake and passing a slice to family members gathered for the holidays, we each taste the flavors, smell the scents, feel the texture, and harken back through our senses to Ireland.

The cookbook, "The Very Best of Traditional Irish Cooking" by Biddy White Lennon and Georgina Campbell is where I found this recipe for Irish Apple Cake. The cake can be served cold or warm. Ice cream, chilled whip cream or a caramel sauce would all go well with this cake.

Recipe: Makes 1 cake

Ingredients:

225 g or 8 oz or 2 cups self-raising (self-rising) flour
good pinch of salt
pinch of ground cloves
115 g or 4 oz or 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
3 or 4 cooking apples, such as Bramley's Seedling
115 g or 4 oz or generous 1/2 cup caster (superfine) sugar
2 eggs, beaten
a little milk to mix
granulated sugar to sprinkle over

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C or 375 degrees F or Gas 5 and butter a 20 cm / 8 in cake tin (pan).
Sift the flour, salt and ground cloves into a bowl. Cut in the butter and rub in until the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs. Peel and core the apples. Slice them thinly and add to the rubbed in mixture with the sugar.
Mix in the eggs and enough milk to make a fairly stiff dough. Then, turn the mixture into the prepared tin and sprinkle with granulated sugar.
Bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, or until springy to the touch. Cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container until ready to serve.

Sprinkle sugar generously on top just before baking.