Wholemeal Apple, Marmalade and Cranberry cake

This gorgeous cake is a slight adaptation of a Nigel Slater recipe, taken from his book Tender (Volume 2 - Fruit), but also published here, in his Observer column. I have quite a few tart apples, from my own tree, stored for baking and wanted a cake with autumnal flavours.

I almost made the cake with white flour and sugar, as I didn't want another heavy cake, after the previous bake, but in the end I stuck to the recipe and went with light muscovado sugar and wholemeal flour, and the cake was still really light and tender.

The changes I did make were a) use dried cranberries instead of golden raisins b) leave out the orange zest and c) use orange marmalade flavoured with whisky, which probably made up for having no orange zest. I also sprinkled the cake with crushed raw sugar cubes rather than Demerara, which gave a better finish, as Demerara often dissolves into the surface. This way, there were still small lumps of sugar left on the surface, as well as a crisp crust where some of the sugar had dissolved.

The cake was cut while still warm, and the first slices were rather crumbly, but the cake firmed up as it finished cooling. Both the orange (with whisky) and cinnamon  flavours were quite subtle, bringing out the apple and cranberry flavours, rather than masking them. Although it was a light cake, it was still moist, and the tart fruits stopped the cake from being too sweet with the added marmalade.

Definitely a cake to make again; I'd like to try it with ginger preserves and pears, with perhaps a few nuts thrown in. And, as usual, apologies for rough photos of brown cake!