Here’re in London, we’re in the height of autumn right now, which means we’re also in the height of apple season and the best time to make apple cakes!

Last autumn I posted a receipe for a lovely apple and pumpkin crumble cake, which I am planning to make again soon. But recently I had a craving for an apple cake my mom used to make us often, when we were kids. It’s an oat and hazelnut cake with apples in it and is therefore moist but also has a lovely crunch to it.

And since it’s an oat cake with nuts, it’s almost like a müsli…or so I keep pretending, when I have a slice of it for breakfast!

The original receipe came from a box of “Kölln blütenzarten Haferflocken” a type of crushed – rather than rolled – porridge oats you can buy in Germany. If you can’t get crushed oats, rolled oats will probably work too; instant porridge however will not.

You will need:

• a 24cm round cake spring form

For the Filling:

• 500g cooking apples
• the juice of ½ a lemon
• 40g unsalted butter, melted
• 75g chopped hazelnuts
• 70g caster sugar

For the cake batter:

• 150g unsalted butter/margarine (plus an extra handful for the cake tin)
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence or 1 pck vanilla sugar
• 3 eggs
• 125g crushed porridge oats (plus an extra handful for the cake tin)
• 50g flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

Start by making the filling. Peel , Core and chop the apples into small squares. Put them in a saucepan with the lemon juice over a low heat for about 3 minutes to soften them a little (careful not to let them become mushy though!). Take the pan of the heat and add the hazelnuts, sugar and melted butter and stir to combine.

Now, preheat the oven to 170 degrees celsius/ gas mark 3.

Grease your baking tin and ‘dust’ the side and base of it with about a tablespoon worth of oats over, which will help prevent the cake from sticking to the tin.

For the cake batter, cream together the butter or margarine and caster sugar, using an electric whisk, until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

In a smaller bowl combine the baking powder with the flour and oats and pour this to the butter mix, beating it together one last time, to combine.

Spoon ¾ of the batter into the cake tin, then pour the apple mixture over it before dotting the last cake batter atop of it, in a cobbler style way.

Bake for about 50 – 60 minutes and leave to cool in the tin for at least 30 minutes.