Irresistible French Apple Cake

Everyone asks me for the recipe for this cake, so here it is. It’s just so easy and delicious, that it makes you wonder why you might toil in the kitchen making anything more complicated for probably not a much greater effect.

It amazes me constantly how much the varying combinations of butter, flour, eggs, and sugar can produce such diverse results. Universally delicious, but so dissimilar in structure depending on the quantities and method of preparation.

This cake has something really special: an extra little topping which gives it an extra crunchy sweetness that really makes it. And to think I found this recipe in a deceptively nondescript vegetarian recipe book I bought for £5 in a discount bookstore in Scotland when I was about 20. Much respect to the creator of this recipe. I love it, and it's very forgiving. It's also quick and simple to make.

I am not sure what makes it French. My friend Pete’s mum Sheila makes a fantastic Dorset apple cake which is a much drier texture, and I suppose quite different, but then I don’t think of the French as making cakes the way we brits do, and this really feels like a proper cake to me. Perhaps the inclusion of chunks of fruit makes it a bit continental, sort of like a clafoutis.

The book is by Christine Ingram and has yielded a couple more gems. Here is the apple cake recipe with frankly very little changed. Why mess with a brilliant recipe? I do not require from it anything more than it provides, except to avoid peeling the apples, which I don’t bother doing, and also I just use any apples we happen to have - usually royal gala or cox. I really don’t think it’s necessary.

I make this cake gluten-free and it is basically exactly the same - fantastic. No one would ever know.

Serve warm with ice cream, I think. But also fabulous on its own, as it comes. It really works as a dessert after a meal as it's moist but not dense.