Our local communal mulberry tree across the road from our house grew a bumper fruit crop this year and as usual young and old appeared with buckets (and even ladders) to pick the juicy messy fruit. It’s a lovely way to get the community together. My girls love eating them straight from the tree and getting purple fingers, or having them with ice cream. I have made an amazing mulberry jam before (see my recipe here) but being time poor this mulberry and apple cake was all I could muster this year.

This cake is deliciously moist and can feed a crowd. Don’t worry if you can’t get hold of mulberries as other berries will do (even frozen ones).

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups plain flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 4 apples, grated (any dessert apple will do)
• 100 g fresh mulberries (a couple of handfuls)
• Icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F and grease a 9 inch (23 cm) bundt cake tin. If you don’t have a bundt tin, you can use a 9 inch round cake tin, but you will need to bake the cake for a bit longer.

Grate the apples. I used a food processor for speed, but grating by hand is easy too. Set it aside and prepare the cake mix. Thoroughly wash the mulberries and remove the stalks.

Using a mixer, mix together the eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla extract until the mix is smooth and silky. Gradually add in the flour (I add 1/4 cups at a time), the baking powder and the cinnamon. Mix thoroughly and then stir through the grated apples and mulberries.

Pour into your prepared cake tin and bake for 50-60 minutes or when a skewer comes out clean. If you’re using a round cake tin, it may take an extra 10-15 minutes.

Leave it to cool in the tin for around 10 minutes and then upend it onto a cooling rack. Dust the cake with icing sugar to make it look pretty and serve.

Enjoy!