Apple and almond traybake

It’s hip to be square. Some great things in life are square – vinyl record covers, the IKEA Kallax system, floppy disks, the Monopoly board, and of course brownies.

When you want to be sure of portions, a square traybake works a lot better than a circular cake. I make a lot of traybakes in my 8 inch square brownie tin, especially for toddler group and bible studies at church. First off today is this apple and almond cake adapted from a Mary Berry recipe.

Ingredients:

225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
225g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp almond extract, or amaretto
150g butter, melted
2-3 cooking apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
50-100g marzipan, cut into small chunks
25g flaked almonds

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160C (140C fan). Grease and line an 8 inch square brownie tin.

In the food processor or mixer, mix the SR flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs, almond extract/amaretto and melted butter. Beat for a minute.

Spread half of the micture in the brownie tin. Top this with the sliced apples and scatter with the chunks of marzipan. Cover with the remaining cake mixture – this is a bit tricky, so blob it on and then try to gently spread. Don’t worry if you don’t cover all of it, because it will spread out as it cooks. Sprinkle the flaked almonds on top.

Cook in the oven for 40 minutes to an hour, until golden brown. Check with a skewer, but remember the apples are supposed to be moist! Once cool, dust with icing sugar and cut into 25 squares.

Throwback: Afternoon tea cake