Almond cake for Verity

Having watched the spectacular Poldark saga, I bought the first two Poldark novels by Winston Graham in The Book People, and then stumbled across the whole set of novels in the charity shop. I got another couple of books from the set, with the previous Poldark TV adaptation characters on the covers.
I've only read the first novel so far, and it is much darker and deeper than the TV adaptation.

In Book I Verity comes to visit Ross at Nampara: "I had to see you, Ross. You understand better than the others. I had to see you about Andrew".
"Sit down, " he said. "I'll get you some ale and a slice of almond cake".

I couldn't find any particular Cornish almond cake recipe in any of my books or online, so my creation is not an authentic old recipe. The author doesn't specify if the cake was baked by Prudie, or whether by then Demelza was able to bake a cake.

In the past I have baked almond cakes, and they tend to be on the dry side. This time I'm adding a grated apple for moister texture.

Almond apple cake
Ingredients:
1 big apple, peeled, cored and grated
4 medium eggs
100g ground almonds
150g caster sugar
150g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
185g butter, melted
a handful of whole blanched almonds

In a medium mixing bowl grate a big peeled apple, Beat in the eggs and add ground almonds, mix well, add sugar, sift in flour and baking powder, and stir in melted and slightly cooled butter.
Mix well together.
Pour the cake batter into a spring cake tin, which has been oiled (add a circle of parchment paper to the bottom of the tin). Decorate the top of the cake with whole almonds.
Bake for about an hour at 180C. Check if it's ready with a wooden toothpick. If the cake starts to brown too quickly, cover it with a foil loosely.
Dust with icing sugar before serving.

I was also very curious to try an ale and cake combination, just like Ross offered to Verity. It was not something I've tried before. Tea, coffee or hot chocolate, yes, ale with cake? Not before yesterday.
It is an interesting combination of flavours, but drinking a glass of ale in the afternoon made me very sleepy. Tea or coffee for me please any time.

I hope you are inspired by books to join in the #ReadCookEat challenge.

The idea is to choose a book, either a world classic or modern fiction, or even memoirs and pick up a dish mentioned or described in that book and then recreate it in a recipe. Please say a few lines about your chosen book, and maybe even do a quote from the book.

If you decide to take part, please add the badge to your post and link up back to me, and either use a link-up tool or add the url of your post as a comment. Alternatively, email me with the link to your post (my email is sasha1703 at yahoo dot com).

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