Deep apple and blueberry streusel cake

By MooK

Ingredients

• 250 g flour
• 125 g ground almonds
• 200 g golden caster sugar (I used white as we don’t get golden in South Africa)
• 250 g of unsalted butter, chilled and diced (I used salted)
• finely grated zest of 1 lemon
• aprox 300g eating apples – peeled, cored and thinly sliced
• approx. 200g Bramley / cooking apples – peeled, cored and thickly sliced
• 250 – 300g blueberries (or blackberries)

Preparation

Step 1

Pre-heat the oven to 190 C (170 C for a fan oven). put the flour, almond flour, zest, 125g of the caster sugar in a food processor and briefly whizz. Add the cool butter and pulse until you get a fine crumb. If the butter is warm it will become a dough and you want to it to be more shortbread-like. Using a spoon press half the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin and lightly press down as if you were making shortbread.

Mix the apples with the remaining 75g of caster sugar and the blueberries, and spoon this over the shortcake base. Empty the remaining crumble on top which should come right to the top of the cake tin. This will sink down as the cake bakes.

Bake the cake for an hour until the top is golden brown. If it is going too dark before it has finished baking, cover loosely with a sheet of tin foil for the last part of the baking time.

Dust with icing sugar and serve with cream or ice cream.

I took this cake to a family Christmas party yesterday and it was devoured with the Christmas pudding and cream.

This is an incredible cake which can be adapted using other fruits or flavourings. You could replace the lemon zest with orange zest which will go beautifully with blueberries.