A Belated Virtual Birthday Cake

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Last week was Mimi's birthday and since I'm obviously too stupid to pay attention to the Facebook birthday reminders (we all know I would forget everyone's birthday, including mine, if it wasn't for those reminders) I blatantly forgot.

So since I can't really send you a cake in a box I decided to send you a virtual one :) I hope you had a fabulous day with lots of cake and an even better party this weekend!

For those of you who are just here for the recipe ;) this is one of my favourite cakes. It's incredibly simple, really quick (once you've peeled the apples) and it simply tastes amazing.

Apple Cake
3 Eggs
100g Butter
100g Sugar
200g Self-raising flour (when you're using plain flour add 2 slightly heaped tsp baking powder)
3 tbsp Milk
A pinch of Salt
1 tbsp Cointreau
900g Apples (that weight is for before you peel them)
1 tsp Jelly or extra-fine jam

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees, grease your trusty 26cm springform tin and sprinkle it with some semolina if you've got some.
Peel and core your apples. Put some music on, this is gonna take some time :) oh, and you'll want to cut them into not to small pieces - the apples from our garden turn into 8 pieces, if you're using bought apples you'll probably get a lot more pieces out of them, though I'm guessing this is not very helpful - go for the thickness of your pinky).
Separate the eggs and beat the egg-whites and the salt until soft peaks form.
Cream the butter and the sugar (give it some time! You will be rewarded texture-wise), then add the egg-yolks one at a time.
Add the flour in 3 parts, alternating with the milk. Once that's done, add the Cointreau and mix it in.
Fold the egg-whites under the mix (I once read that the best thing to do is to properly mix in about 1/3 of the egg-whites and then fold under the rest and that really does seem to make things easier).
We're nearly there :)
Fold in the apples and pour the mix into the waiting tin.
Bake for 45 minutes, then take it out, turn off the oven, brush the surface with the jelly (I used apricot jam, but it's even nicer with -do you want to guess?- quince jelly :) ) and stick everything back into the oven (still turned off) for another 15 minutes to let the jelly dry.
Let the cake cool and enjoy it with a lovely cup of tea.