Orange Frosted Apple Loaf

This is an unusual cake, in that it doesn't taste strongly of it's main named ingredients; in fact it was more reminiscent of my favourite carrot cake recipe, due to the spices and orange zest used. The grated apple really just added sweetness and moisture to the cake, rather than any noticeable flavour, and the spices and dried cranberries were more prominent than the orange zest.

I made a few changes to the recipe for this Orange Frosted Apple Loaf ; firstly I left out the pecans and added 50g more dried fruit, making the fruit a mix of 100g cranberries and 50g sultanas, then I didn't use the low-fat soft cheese frosting, instead just making a glacé icing with icing sugar and some of the juice of the orange from which I'd already taken the zest. Because my loaf tin wasn't quite the same shape and size stipulated in the recipe, the loaf took 55 minutes to bake, rather than 45 minutes, but I'm quite used to loaf cakes having different baking times.

The recipe called for whisking one of the egg whites separately, then folding this into the cake batter at the last stage of mixing; I think this helped with the lightness, as the cake crumb was very close textured but not as dense as many cakes made with a proportion of wholemeal flour. I thought the texture was excellent - many cakes adding grated fruit can be a bit too moist and dense - this was just right!

I really liked this cake, despite my disappointment that it didn't have an apple flavour,  and it seemed almost healthy to eat it - the natural sweetness of the apple and dried fruit meant added sugar could be reduced; oil was used instead of butter, reducing saturated fat levels and the fat was reduced even more by adding some yogurt; the use of wholemeal flour and dried fruit increased the fibre content. This is definitely a cake to put on the 'to be repeated list'!