Vanilla Apple Cake - Sweet and Simple Bakes

This is a most delicious cake, perfect for that morning or afternoon tea or coffee break or for a more formal teaparty. It's from the Brit site Sweet and Simple Bakes (a wonderful site for British cakes). The more I think of my already eaten apple cake the more I can almost taste it; it has a nice sweet, but not overly sweet, crust that forms on the top.

Here's the recipe:

Vanilla Apple Cake

Ingredients
250g/9oz unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
250g/9oz golden caster sugar (or normal caster sugar)
4 eggs, beaten
250g/9oz self-raising flour
1 vanilla pod, split, seeds removed and reserved (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
3 small Bramley apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges (or any other type of cooking apple, if not apple of your choice)
2 tbsp Demerara sugar
¼ tsp ground cinnamon

Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4/350F. Butter a 20cm/8inch springform tin, then line the base with baking paper.

Beat the caster sugar and butter together until the mixture turns pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, flour and vanilla seeds, then beat together quickly to make a smooth batter. Tip into the prepared tin, then lay the apple wedges on top, poking them halfway into the mix. Don’t worry if the apples appear crowded – they’ll shrink as they cook. Sprinkle with the Demerara and cinnamon, then bake for 1 hour 5 mins, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean and the sponge is risen and golden.

Leave to cool for a few mins, then release the tin and cool the cake completely on a wire rack.

I put regular sugar in the coffee grinder to get "caster sugar" - much less expensive and just as good; actually bought some Demerara sugar but a running brown sugar (not the packed kind) will do just as well. Also used Golden Delicious apples.

Definitely worth making again and then again.