Wednesday 2nd March - CAKE!

On Saturday, the cake tin was empty, the Canadian Maple Chocolates were but a happy memory, there were no biscuits in the house...

and the freezer is full of apple puree made in September...

so I searched on applesauce cake uk on google, and chose this one

http://www.crystalpalacefoodmarket.co.uk/applesauce-cake-salted-caramel-icing%E2%80%8F/

which I STRONGLY recommend. Mine looks like this (what's left of it)

I had a few issues and problems along the way - nothing serious. For a start, I haven't really climbed on board the current fashion for "salted caramel". So I didn't add salt to the cake recipe or the icing recipe. Oh, and by the way, I used a "middling" coloured soft brown sugar; the pale stuff always seems a bit pale to me, and dark brown would have been too strong.

I have no idea what has happened to my stash of mixed spice. Maybe it went in the last batch of mincemeat? So I used a big teaspoon, maybe a much as nearly a tablespoon, of cinnamon, and a fat pinch of cloves.

Another problem was the apple juice - 100ml. I didn't have any in the house and I wasn't going to go out into the cold wind and buy any. So, GENIUS MOMENT - I substituted 30ml of dark rum and 70 ml of water. (100ml of rum looked, and smelled, like too much of a good thing).

I lined my 2lb - that would be 1kg, I suppose - loaf  tin with baking paper, ignoring the instructions to mess around with greasing the tin (and my fingers and my sleeves and quite a lot of the kitchen) and tipping in some flour, shaking it about, and tipping the excess out (and covering everything in a fine white dust).

Otherwise I followed the instructions to the letter, including the "unsalted caramel icing". It worked like a dream. Solid, but not heavy, full of spicy apple flavour, moist but not soggy, and fragrant with heavenly heavenly rum. Worth buying the rum for if you haven't got any lying around.