Karen Wright: A spooky apple cake for Halloween themed class

We made this in our Halloween themed classWe made this in our Halloween themed class
We made this in our Halloween themed class
Halloween is knocking at the door once again and soon all the local children, dressed up to the nines in all their spooky finery, will be too.

When I was a child, I don’t think pumpkins had arrived in the UK, certainly not in Featherstone where I grew up.

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I will be leading an online baking class on the Sunday before Halloween with a spooky theme.

The company, ‘Bake with a Legend’, that I sometimes work with is following each episode of this years Great British Bake Off closely.

It is setting a class to correspond with the theme of each week.

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I was allocated the Halloween class and my first task was to come up with a suitable bake to fit the lesson.

The signature challenge on the show was an apple cake, so that was my brief!

As it so happened, I had recently been on holiday to Italy where we were treated to a great breakfast.

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This included very special cakes that were baked by the in-house chef.

My favourite was the Torte de Mele, which was apple cake.

I had asked the chef about his ingredients, and I incorporated them into my recipe for my class.

Quite a bit of cinnamon and some maple syrup. He used oil instead of butter and some brown sugar.

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I needed to think of some spooky decorations to fill the time in my class while the cake was baking.

I decided in caramelised apples to pile on top of the cake, Italian meringue spooky ghosts and mini toffee apples.

There was also a caramel drizzle and a mallow spiders web.

Quite a few processes involved so my class will have plenty of challenges on the day.

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Paul Hollywood is always firm about flavours, if it an apple cake it must predominantly taste of apple.

So, I toned down the cinnamon in my cake to make sure that apple was the “hero”.

I hope you all enjoy Halloween and remember, if you do carve a pumpkin, the flesh can be used in cooking.

It is very useful and always worth noting. Think pumpkin pie or a hot and spicy pumpkin soup, remember the old saying “waste not want not”!