Apple Gingerbread with Cinnamon Glaze

Sometimes recipes are just too vague - I should have learned by now to be suspicious of any recipe which starts with 1 large cooking apple. What does that cook call large? Are my apples large or medium by my standards, let alone someone elses? I should also learn to read a recipe and have some idea of how big the finished cake is going to be; this one was much smaller than I expected! I think I was influenced by the fact that the recipe claimed to be from the Women's Institute - that should be reliable, surely?

 I followed the recipe quite closely, the only change was that I used 2/3 black treacle and 1/3 golden syrup, and added half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the cake batter too. I cooked the apples with a pinch of ground cloves, until they had collapsed and the purée was quite dry. I cooked the gingerbread in a 7" round tin - it rose quite a lot in the oven but fell back as it cooled. I glazed the cake with icing sugar flavoured with half a teaspoon of cinnamon and mixed to a flowing consistency with clear apple juice

The gingerbread was very moist and tasty, but a little too dense. I think that was probably due to too much apple and possibly not enough raising agent because of the acidity of some of the ingredients such as treacle. Next time I will double all the cake ingredients, err on the side of caution with the apple and perhaps add a little bicarbonate of soda to neutralise the black treacle and give a better rise.