My First Blog Entry!

I thought over and over again at what I should type in as my very first entry...
Since I aim for this to become a nice little baking/cooking blog, I think it's best to start the whole thing with a nice recipe!
Sorry I have only one photo showing the end result... not very fancy but will definetly give you an idea. I made this really quickly to bring over at a dinner party last night.
I took this recipe from one of my mom's old cookery books called "Dolci a Occhi Chiusi" (translated would be "Desserts with your eyes closed"), and then made a few changes to suit the ingredients I had.

I am Italian, so my measurements will often be in gr/ml rather than cups!

APPLE PLUMCAKE WITH RASPBERRY TOPPING
Ingredients:
150 gr all-purpose flour
130 gr castor sugar
100 gr butter, melted
3 eggs
3 apples, grated
2-3 tbsp rum
some lemon zest + lemon juice
2 tbsp baking powder
150 gr raspberries
powdered gelatin (optional)


Turn on the oven and set it at 160°C.
In a large bowl, mix together the eggs with the sugar until you have a smooth and pale yellow mixture. Add the melted butter, the flour and the lemon zest and juice along with the rum. Mix well until all the ingredients are combined.
Add the grated apples and the baking powder. Pour the mixture into a plumcake tin lined with wax paper (I used a 30 cm long one) and bake it for 45 to 50 minutes, untit the tester stick comes out nice and clean.
Take it out and let it cool for at least one hour. In the mean time, prepare the raspberries by rinsing them in water and let them drain in a strainer.
Once the plum cake has cooled down almost completely, make an incision on top of it with a knife, giving it a rectangular shape and standing clear of the rim by at least 1 cm. Gently scrape up the surface of the plum cake that's inside the rectangle and proceed to fill it with the raspberries. Coat them with some gelatin and refrigerate for half an hour.
Serve it sprinkled with some icing sugar to taste.

Notes:

• I made this recipe with grated apples as opposed to diced apples so as to avoid them sinking at the bottom of the cake (even if I sprinkle them with flour, they never seem to float!), plus it gives a very nice texture to the whole plumcake. I also try to use a variety of apple that is a bit dry and not so much juicy, so the batter will not turn out as runny.
• I like to use gelatin on top of the raspberries, so that when you actually slice it up they won't roll all over the place but nicely stick together.

This is the end result... sorry for the not-so-fancy setting but I really had little time!