Mulled Wine apple cake, featuring Holy Lama Spice Drops

A few weeks ago one of my fellow bloggers was tweeting about some amazing new spice drops she had been sent by Holy Lama Spice drops, so I was pleased and really intrigued when I was also sent a couple of flavours to have a play with.

The spice drops are essentially contracted extracts of natural spices, ethically sourced and simple to use.You just add as much as you need to your recipe using the dropper,They also have a 3 year shelf life so no more fusty musty stale jars of spices.

Holy Lama also have several blends as well as single spices in their range so you can understand why the range is popular with chefs and home cooks alike., in fact you have 27 to choose from. The drops retail at 3.49 a bottle so good value in my eyes as they last well and have a great just ground flavour and aroma.

Inspired by my samples I decided to use the "mulled wine" drops in a classic rustic style apple cake, this also enable me to use some of crop of apples from the trees in the garden. The resultant cake produced a wonderful aroma whilst baking and is delicious served warm or cold.  Please don't worry if you don't have any spice drops to hand as you can produce excellent results by using cinnamon or apple pie spices in your bake instead.

                                       

The bake is one that works both gluten free (with slight adaptions) or with wheat flour as this is a recipe that I have made many times over the years, another recipe why I like the recipe is that it makes two round cakes so giving you one to freeze or gift to a friend.

What you need

• 5 or 6 eating apples , peeled cored and cut in thin slices
• 2 eggs -free range (use 3 if using Gluten Free flour)
• 350g granulated sugar
• 2 droppers of Mulled Wine Spice drops or 2 tsp of cinnamon or apple pie spice
• 120ml Sunflower oil
• 300g flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 x 9" baking tins - oil sprayed and base lined 

                              

What you do

• Preheat the oven to 180C
• Measure all the ingredients except the apples, eggs and oil into a large baking bowl, once you have sliced the apples toss in the flour mixture to prevent them oxidising.
• Once all the apples are in the bowl, add the eggs and oil , mix together thoroughly. This will be hard work as the mixture is quite dry but all will be fine.
• Split the mixture between the two prepared baking tins and smooth the top with a spatula
• Place in the preheated oven and bake for approximately 50 -55 minutes until golden and well risen.
• Cool on a wire rack, serve warm or cold with custard, cream or yogurt

The spice drops add a beautiful warm spicy fragrance to this bake.