A morning out

 

SPICY DORSET APPLE CAKE

4 oz/115 g butter or margarine

4 oz/115 g caster or brown sugar

8 oz/225 g flour, S-R or "adjusted" (whatever THAT is!)

1 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice (or a mixture to your choice)

1 lb/ .5 Kg cooking apples (a good way of mopping up the fallers)

3 oz/85g dried fruit (currents, sultanas, cranberries etc)

2 eggs

Rub the margarine and the flour together.  Add the spices, sugar, and peeled/cored/chopped apples, and the beaten eggs.  Put the mixture in a large cake tin (10 inch/25 cm round or 8 inch/20 cm square) and bake at Gas Mark 6/200 deg. C/400 deg. F) for 35 -45 mins.  The large amount of apple makes the cake a little fragile, so leave in the tin for 5 minutes or more before removing.  If you do not have a large cake tin, use two smaller ones and reduce the cooking time a little.

Here's an extract from a lovely poem from William Barnes (the Dorset poet), dated 1835: "Father Come Home" where it mentions an earlier Dorset apple cake (which just had bits of apple stuck into it):

Your supper's nearly ready.  I've a-got

Some teaties here a-doen in the pot;

I wish wi' all my heart I had some meat.

I got a little ceake too, here, a-beaken o'n

Upon the vier.  'Tis done by this time though

He's nice an' moist; vor when I were-a meakin o'n

I stuck some bits ov apple in the dough.

I've put the recipe up before, but here it is for any newcomers.

Yesterday we had a drive down to Llandeilo to go to our friend Brita's Antiques Fair, and catch up with old friends.  It was lovely to have a natter and wander round looking for anything different.

Inside it was very busy, and this was the only photo I managed to get - with someone walking into shot just as I took it! Anyway, it was nice to have a break from our four walls, though just walking down from the car park had Keith tired out and we had to abandon a plan we had for a surprise visit on old friends near where we used to live.  Keith couldn't manage more than a dozen steps up towards the church on the way back as it was slightly uphill and the tiny bit of energy he'd had had gone.  Such things are so fleeting.  He has to wait a full three months before having a blood test to see how the thyroxine is working - a whole 7 weeks to go.

    Tam and her boyfriend came today to help move the furniture back into our bedroom, and put some of the books back into her bookshelf, plus sorting out cookery stuff to take back with them.  It was lovely to see them.

    However, when I sat down and watched an Escape to the Country, it was from Devon, and it made me feel very low to realize house values there mean it is forever beyond our budget, especially post-Covid.  It's something like £482K for a fairly ordinary detached house now.  Of course, this is our final home, but I still held on to a little bit of hope that we could somehow get magicked down there in time for the Last Orders!  Isn't it silly?  But I am quite choked now.