I never thought I'd say that cake could be too sweet

After my last post where I declared my desire to go adventuring through the world of American and French patisseries, I got to thinking that I would bake something American this weekend. I've been taping (yes I know we don't use VHS any more but I'm old-fashioned and still refer to my Sky+-ing as taping...) James Martin's United Cakes of America on Good Food Channel and so I took a look through some of his recipes from the series - this is where I came across Apple Crumble Cake.

Now I am a big fan of crumble cakes - I mean, what's not to love:
Cake - check
Crumble - check
Fruit - check (I mean after all, this makes the cake one of your five-a-day doesn't it?!)
Frankly, slap a bit of custard with it and I'm more than a happy bunny.

I won't copy the recipe here - you can look it up here: http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/654265. I will however, offer my thoughts on improvements to said cake!

Essentially you make a spiced sponge cake with chopped apple and nuts through the batter then top this with a basic crumble mix and more apple pieces before baking. Once baked and cooled, you slice and fill with whipped cream and then top with a fudge topping. Well, in the true spirit of all my baking, I didn't have any pecans so used walnuts and almonds instead and I didn't have enough cream so made a cinnamon buttercream for the filling. Other than that, I followed the recipe to the letter!! So how did it turn out you ask? Well it is a nice cake and I do love the crumble texture with the soft cake. Its quite a moist cake so fairly dense in texture but the apple and nuts help to break that up a bit.

Now for my suggestions (listen up James Martin!):
1. This is an APPLE cake, yet the apple-i-ness is somewhat underwhelming.  I'd say it needs more apple in the mix and/or the addition of a layer of apple between the cake and the crumble (I'm going to try it with uncooked apple slices (like a tarte tatin) or stewed apple).
2. Waaaaaay too much sugar - never thought I would say this! - its very American in that sense and for us Brits, I think even the sweetest tooth would struggle a bit.  I'd definitely cut back on the sugar, especially in the crumble topping, which of course is topped with fudge.  I do think that it didn't help that I had buttercream instead of whipped cream in the middle - this brings me to point 3...
3. This is an apple crumble cake - what goes best with crumble??? Of course - custard! So I would make a crème légère (oh yeah, get me knowing the posh French words eh? ok so I may have made use of Wikipedia...).  So what is one of those leggy cream things you ask - well its a creme patissiere mixed with whipped cream.  I figure that this will bring the custard flavour but cut the sweetness and make it a little lighter due to the cream.
4. Controversially, Mr Ellie suggested scrapping the fudge topping altogether - I'm of two minds on this one so I'm gonna put this one down to a personal preference vote!

One thing is for sure - the engineers that I work with haven't complained at all about the cake and demolished it within about half an hour!

Miss E xxx