Apple cake is a popular dessert

Dessert

In cultures around the world, dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food. The word comes from the French language as dessert and this from Old French desservir, "to clear the table" and "to serve." Common Western desserts include cakes, biscuits,...

 produced with the main ingredient of apple

Apple

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...

s. Such a cake

Cake

Cake is a form of bread or bread-like food. In its modern forms, it is typically a sweet and enriched baked dessert. In its oldest forms, cakes were normally fried breads or cheesecakes, and normally had a disk shape...

 is made through the process of slicing this sweet fruit to add fragrance to a plain cake base. Traditional apple cakes go a step further by including various spice

Spice

A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours...

s such as nutmeg

Nutmeg

The nutmeg tree is any of several species of trees in genus Myristica. The most important commercial species is Myristica fragrans, an evergreen tree indigenous to the Banda Islands in the Moluccas of Indonesia...

 or cinnamon

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet and savoury foods...

, which give off a unique flavour. Upon the addition of spices the batter can also be accompanied by crushed nut

Nut (fruit)

A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...

s, the most popular being walnut

Walnut

Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

s and almond

Almond

The almond , is a species of tree native to the Middle East and South Asia. Almond is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated seed of this tree...

s.

Dorset apple cake, Devon apple cake and Somerset apple cake are traditional forms of this cake, respectively from Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

, Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

 and Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. They may include apple juices local to these counties as part of their recipes, but are not necessary.

Apples are also used in other cakes, including chocolate cake

Chocolate cake

Chocolate cake is a cake flavored with melted chocolate or cocoa powder.-History:Chocolate cake is made with chocolate; it can be made with other ingredients, as well. These ingredients include fudge, vanilla creme, and other sweeteners. The history of chocolate cake goes back to 1764, when Dr...

, where their water-retention can help a normally-dry cake to stay moist. In this case they may be either dried

Dried fruit

Dried fruit is fruit where the majority of the original water content has been removed either naturally, through sun drying, or through the use of specialized dryers or dehydrators. Dried fruit has a long tradition of use dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and is prized...

or fresh.

Recipe

Spiced Apple Cake

3oz golden caster sugar
6oz softened, unsalted butter
3 medium/large eggs
5oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground mace

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and grease a 20cm tin. Cream the butter with the sugar until it is all creamed in. Beat the eggs and pour it in the creamed butter in quarters or thirds. Mix until it looks a little runny. Sift in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, 3/4 tsp of ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground mace and a small pinch of salt, mix it in until it looks all mixed in.

2. Pour the cake mixture into the tin, sprinkle the remaining cinnamon and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour until golden brown and an inserted skewer is clean.

3. Serve with double cream or coffee.