Fun things to do with quince. Membrillo is the obvious one. I did also try HFW’s lamb and quince salad recipe but it didn’t go down very well with the missus (it was quite honestly a bit weird).
Anyway, this cake is well worth a try.
Windfall cake
3 large apples (I used Bramley)
1 large quince or 2 small ones
175g butter plus extra for greasing
2 eggs
180g soft brown sugar
100g blanched almonds, processed to breadcrumb texture
2 lemons
85g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
50g almond flakes
This is a great use of quince and very autumnal. It produces a very soft, unctuous textured cake with a lovely flavour of quince and lemon. This recipe is from Sarah Raven’s fantastic (really) Garden Cookbook, but she credits the original to Monty Don. So I feel justified in reproducing it here!
1) Peel, core and roughly chop the apples and quince. Make sure you get all the quince core out because this can be very hard. Put the fruit into an oven-proof dish and cover with 50g of brown sugar as well as the zest and juice of a lemon. Bake at 180oC until the pieces are soft but not quite broken down (20-30 minutes).
2) Cream together 150g of butter with 150g of soft brown sugar in a food processor. Transfer to a bowl and beat in 2 eggs, one at a time. Add the processed almonds and flour and baking powder and fold into the mixture. Mix the fruit in.
3) Transfer the mixture to a greased, lined baking dish. I used a 19cm dish with good success (original recipe asks for 26cm so that will probably also work).
4) Bake for 30 minutes. In the meantime melt 30g of butter with 25g of brown sugar in a pan, plus juice of a second lemon. Add almond flakes. Remove cake from the oven and spread mixture over top of the cake. Put back in oven and bake for 15-20 minutes longer, until brown.
5) Leave to cool in tin.
Serve with some creme fraiche, or yoghurt, or ice-cream! In fact I tried that Heston salted caramel popcorn ice cream and it was quite good.