Stocking up for winter and a little baking...

I'm still catching up with the blog from things I did last year - I guess this is the perils of having little cupcakes of my own and working... So, this was me making the most of the bountiful fruits of autumn and laying a little in store for gifting and enjoying over the festive season.
We had some lovely apples from next door and some tomatoes from our garden...

We also made the most of what was in natural abundance and collected blackberries, sloes and elderberries - most of which were added to gin to make a range of liqueurs to give as gifts for Christmas, although I did make some into some very lovely elderberry and clove jelly to go with cooked meats.  The lemons weren't local or season, but I LOVE preserved lemons and often make them to keep in to add to things!

The bread was our usual running as we endeavour to make all of the bread that we eat, and the cakes were part of the basis of the birthday cake for my daughter which is coming up in another post!

Maman Blanc's Apple Tart

We enjoyed watching the series that Raymond Blanc did recently, and particularly enjoyed the bread and the apples episodes (Mr Cupcake likes baking bread nearly as much as I like making cakes...).  However, following the whoopie pies earlier in the week I had some left over double cream, as well as having eggs in the fridge and a few apples in the fruit bowl... it occurred to me that with these and few other storecupboard essentials I could make the lovely Manam Blanc's Apple Tart.  It was very simple as I followed the instructions from the BBC website - although we had no calvados and so substituted this with the good old Captain Morgan that usually lives just for Christmas cake and Christmas pudding!

Eggless apple cake

The recipe for this cake was eggless, and would have been dairy free, but instead of using coconut milk (which I didn't have) I used regular milk.  I also filled it with cream which is not specifically dairy free... the recipe book recommended some branded dairy free whip stuff which really didn't sound very nice at all.  The recipe for the cake made three layers in the tins that I had, but given the depth it would have looked out of proportion and been very difficult to cut.  The cake was very appley, nice and spicey and I had sprinkled some granulated brown sugar on the top which made it reminiscent of the country slices made by a certain Mr K which we used to have on train journeys when I was little.