Recipe Collection

Apple Cake (Biskvit)

Olia Hercules

This is one of the easiest cakes to whip up in seconds. Whenever we had a craving for something sweet, my mum would make this, which she simply called biskvit (a sponge). It is mostly apples, with some fluffy eggy batter spiced with cinnamon and sprinkled with icing sugar.

Serves: 6

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 35 minutes

Photography: Kris Kirkham

Season: Autumn

Ingredients

5 eggs
200g caster sugar
200g plain flour
1 tsp cinnamon
4 green apples, cored and thinly sliced
Icing sugar to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C fan. Butter a 22cm cake tin with a removable base.
Beat the eggs and sugar until very fluffy. There is no raising agent in this cake so the amount of air you beat into it is essential.
Gently fold in the flour and cinnamon.
Place the apples at the bottom of the cake tin and pour in the cake batter. Cook for 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Dust with some icing sugar and serve.

Read more: #CookForUkraine

As part of their #CookForUkraine, Ukranian chef Olia Hercules and Russian food creative Alissa Timoshkina are sharing recipes and hosting fundraising events in an effort to increase awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Read more about the charity and donate by clicking the link below. This recipe was extracted from Olia Hercules’s wonderful book Mamushka (2015).

— about the author

Olia Hercules was born in the south of Ukraine in 1984, and spent most of her childhood in Cyprus. After moving to the UK and working as a chef in restaurants such as Ottolenghi, she published Mamushka, a cookbook that celebrates her family recipes, from Ukraine and Moldova to Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. She has since published two more cookbooks, championing the culinary traditions of her homeland and surrounding, lesser known cultures.

@oliahercules
www.oliahercules.com

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