Apple and Cinnamon Traybake - it's a piece of cake

Unintentionally, the photo bears more than a passing resemblance to the previous post pic for pear muffins. But hey. The squares look rather large, but the apple is actually quite small!

This is another fairly quick and very easy recipe, I think, and the result is a traybake of very nice, moist and not too crumbly squares (or you could do triangles) with a mildly crunchy topping. Prepping the apples takes a bit of time, so I do this first and turn on the oven after that. Lining the baking tin with parchment is worth the trouble.

Although there are 10 steps in the 'method', the preparation steps (1-8) wouldn't take much more than 20 minutes.

I use a 24x18cm baking tin to get just the right height of the finished cake. (My calculator says that's roughly the same as 21cm square.) The mixture doesn't look that much and spreads quite thinly in the tin, but it should all rise nicely. This quantity makes 24-30 squares.

Apple and Cinnamon Traybake

The oven will need to be at 150C, middle shelf. 24x18cm baking tin, lined with baking parchment.

Ingredients

4 medium apples 

170g butter 

240 caster sugar

3 (medium) eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract (or 3 if using essence)

265g self-raising flour

2 heaped tsp ground cinnamon

60g demerara sugar (otherwise soft brown)

Method

  1  Quarter, peel & core the apples. Chop to hazelnut-sized pieces.

  2  Soften the butter in a large bowl, e.g. 10sec in microwave or sit 

         for a minute over a pan of very hot water.

  3  Add the caster, eggs and vanilla and beat together until smooth.

  4  Stir in the flour and cinnamon until none is visible.

  5  Pile half the mixture into the tin and spread over the base.

  6  Scatter half of the apple pieces evenly over it.

  7  Add the remaining mixture, smooth over and top with the rest of 

         the apple.

  8  Sprinkle the demerara sugar evenly over this.

  9  Bake for 30-35 mins until top is browned and a skewer inserted 

         into the centre comes out clean.

10  Leave in the tin for about 10mins, then cut cleanly into squares.

This recipe also works well if apples are replaced by 3 mashed over-ripe bananas, mixed in with the flour instead of layering. In either case the cinnamon could also be left out & some chopped nuts (pecan/walnut/hazelnut) added. All of these can be frozen, or kept in a tin in the fridge for a few days.