Gluten Free Toffee Apple Honey Cake

October 31, 2024

This gluten-free cake is our sweet and delicious tribute to all things autumn, with some suitable spices, chunks of Bramley apple and sticky sweet toffee. If you are having any kind of Halloween party this cake will surely go down a treat! One bite will take you back in time with a taste that will remind you of Mum's apple crumble puddings and the toffee apple treats of childhood. Despite being gluten free this cake has a wonderful texture thanks to the ground almonds.

To make our gluten free toffee apple cake you will need:

1 Large Bramley Apple
20g Unsalted Butter
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 tbsp Just Bee Honey
100g Toffee Chunks
200g Unsalted Butter
200g Caster Sugar
4 Medium Sized Eggs
80ml Fresh milk
1 ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
250g Self Raising Gluten Free Flour (see notes)
200g Ground Almonds
1 tsp Ground Ginger
1 tsp Baking Powder (see notes)
½ tsp Salt

Optional Toffee Glaze

1 tbsp Just Bee Honey
1 tbsp Butter
4 Standard Sized Toffees

A medium sized frying pan
A medium sized bowl
A large mixing bowl
A spring-form cake tin around 20cm diameter and 6cm deep
A small saucepan

Step One: Preparing the apple and toffee.

Peel and core the apple, then cut into small chunks. As a rough guide I make them around 1 ½ – 2 cm cubes but don't worry about accuracy too much.

Bring a medium sized frying pan up to medium temp then add 20g of butter, leaving the rest of the butter out so it softens slightly for later. Add the apple chunks and fry in the butter for a minute. Then sprinkle over a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and continue to toss the apples until they are well coated in butter and cinnamon.

Finally add a tablespoon of honey and continue to cook for a couple of minutes more on a medium high heat until everything starts to caramelise. Remove from the heat and transfer the caramelised apple chunks to a plate or sheet of baking paper, then put them aside to cool.

Chop around 100g of toffee into small pieces, again it doesn't matter too much on the size, a regular single toffee I would chop into 4 pieces.

Step Two: Making the cake batter.

Add 200g butter and 200g caster sugar to a bowl and cream together until you have something that looks like fluffy mash potatoes. I use a fork, but you can use whatever utensils you prefer. (You can of course use an electric mixer if you have one). Then add the 4 eggs one at a time and beat to combine, don't worry if you are mixing by hand and it looks a little lumpy at this stage. Next add the milk and finally add the vanilla extract to the batter and stir through.

In a large mixing bowl add the gluten free flour, ground almonds, baking powder, ground ginger and salt, give that a good stir together, then add the wet ingredients and mix to combine. You should be left with a fairly thick cake batter.

Step Three: Time to get the oven on!

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4/180c (lower to 160c for a fan assisted oven)

Step Four: Create the cake!

Grease the inside of the spring-form tin with a little butter (or line with baking paper if you prefer) then add around half of the cake batter and smooth with a spatula. Add the apple chunks spreading them evenly across the top, then add the toffee chunks.

Top Tip: Avoid adding any apple or toffee pieces to the very centre of the cake, this will stop it collapsing into a gooey mess the middle when you cut it. It will also allow you check the cake is fully baked later, it can be tricky to tell sticking your skewer into sticky toffee and apple.

Next add the rest of the cake batter on top and smooth over level with a spatula. Baking the cake this way will give a finished result not unlike a sandwich cake with filling, but it's all baked together!

Step Five: Baking the cake.

Pop your cake into the centre of the oven and bake for 50 mins, to check it's fully cooked push a wooden skewer or chop stick into the centre of the cake, if it comes out clean then it's done. If not return to the oven for 5-10 extra minutes.

When the cake has finished baking it's important to let it cool before doing anything else. Gluten free cakes can be quite fragile when warm because there's no gluten holding it all together! So leave it in the tin to cool off to room temperature before removing and cutting a slice. This might take a while!

Optional Toffee Glaze: This is completely optional but recommended if you like a sweet sticky cake or you would like to serve some of this cake as a dessert with warm custard (which is also fantastic!) Simply add a tablespoon of honey, a tablespoon of butter and 4 standard sized toffees to a small sauce pan and heat gently until melted. Stir with a silicon spatula, then pour over the (fully cooled) cake. Because we've made a hole in the middle of the cake checking it was cooked, DO NOT pour the toffee topping onto the middle of the cake because a lot will go into the centre of the cake and make it soggy (or even collapse the middle if the cake is still a little warm). Instead start from the outside and circle around until you end in the middle with the final teaspoon of glaze.

Notes: For this cake recipe I used 'Free Self Raising White Flour' from Sainsburys. I don't usually specify or recommend particular brands (other than Just Bee Honey of course!) but gluten free flours can vary a lot in the types of flours used. This is the gluten-free flour I've always used for baking simply because it's the one I have good experience using, I can recommend it for this recipe and other cake recipes you might want to make, but if you have a different brand/type of gluten free flour you like then please try that instead.

There are 'special' gluten-free baking powders available in the supermarket 'free from' aisle which cost a lot more than regular baking powder, but in my experience most baking powders available do not contain gluten anyway. The one I use doesn't and it's just a standard supermarket version, so check what you already have in the cupboard before buying anything because it might not be needed, it should appear in bold in the ingredients if it's there and be listed in the 'allergy advice' on the label.