Somerset cider cake… 2

I wrote about one of our local traditional recipes, Somerset cider cake. Although the Romans brought apples as we know them to our islands, wild crab apples were here a long time before that. Although there is no evidence for people using them to make ‘cider’, I’m sure they must have done something along those lines, hunter gatherers would have gathered them along with all the other native fruits… and who knows, maybe they made them into an alcoholic drink. Romans introduced apples, and developed orchards to grow the trees, and once they had left and monasteries were developed, in the monks gardens were orchards!

By the early middle ages cider production was an important part of farming, workers were sometimes paid in cider, and with water being not as safe to drink as beer and cider, it was a good way to be refreshed healthily. Cider was particularly produced in the south, in Kent, Surrey and Sussex and Buckinghamshire, in the east in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, Devonshire, and in most other counties as far north as Yorkshire. However, it was the south-west which had the most rain and the most sun and warm weather, which became the cider area – Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somerset and Devon.

Cider can be drunk – obviously but also used in all sorts of recipes. The BBC Good food page has the following suggestions:

With chicken – Chicken & cider fricassee with parsley croutes, Cider, mustard & herb chicken
With sausages – Sticky cider & mustard sausage wheel with box grater salad
hot caramel malted milk.
In gravy – Roast pork with cider gravy, Herb-studded roast loin of pork with apple & cider
With fish… – Normandy fish stew
… and shellfish – Steamed mussels with cider, spring onions & cream, Mussels with red onion, cider and crème fraîche
With game – Rabbit pie, Pheasant, leek & bacon pie
With pork belly – Crisp cider-braised pork belly
To braise vegetables – Cider-braised cabbage & leek hotpot
With potatoes – Cider fondant potatoes
At Christmas – Cider-roast turkey, Mulled cider, Glazed gammon with parsley & cider sauce
In soup – British onion soup

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/18-ways-cook-cider

However… there are no cake recipes!here is the one I used, but I have now adjusted it, because the cake was a little dry to my taste – although I did also think it would be nice eaten with a chunk of real, good, Cheddar cheese – in a Somerset version of the Yorkshire tradition!

4 oz Somerset butter
4 oz sugar
2 eggs
8 oz flour, sifted with ½ tsp each of bicarbonate of soda. ginger, and nutmeg
5 fl oz good Somerset cider whisked until it is really frothy
1 dessert apple, peeled, cored, and very finely sliced in rings or…
… for drizzle topping 3 tbsp cider, 2 oz sugar

cream butter and sugar until it is really lightly and creamy and pale in colour
gently fold in half the flour and spice mix
stir in the cider,very gently
fold in the rest of the flour
pour into a greased and lined 7″ cake tin (if you are using the apples as a topping, lay them lightly on top, arranging to look pretty) and put into a preheated oven, 300ºF, 150ºC, gas mark 2 for 45 mins
if you are doing the drizzle topping, gently melt the 2 oz sugar into the 3 tbsps cider, spike the cake all over with a fine skewer, or gently with a long tined fork, and spoon the syrup over the cake, distributing equally
keep for a day before you cut it, eat it, enjoy it!
(I guess you could do the apple topping and the drizzle, perforating the cooked cake around the apple slices and in the middle of the holes where the core was)