Danish apple cake

I'm not sleeping well at the moment and this morning woke up at 3am, completely unable to get back to sleep. My recipe for insomnia? Baking of course! So I found myself in the wee small hours peeling apples to make a version of a Danish apple cake. Traditionally this would be made with ground almonds, but I didn't have any and couldn't pop to the shop at that time of night (or morning) so used ground walnuts instead. Either works well I think. Again I used some gorgeous jewel-like crimson raisins (I recently used them in my spiced rum, raisin and dark chocolate cookies) but normal raisins or sultanas would work just as well. I'm not sure it's traditional to soak them first either, but I always like raisins so much better when they've been soaked in something so they plump up and become lovely and juicy. My only tip with this would be to make sure you really test it for done-ness before taking it out of the oven - it's easy to underbake it because of the thick layers of fruit on top of the cake batter. Delicious for breakfast any time of the day or night!

Ingredients
3 oz crimson raisins
3 tsbp apple juice
5 oz butter (plus extra for greasing)
5 oz caster sugar
2 eggs
4 fl. oz milk
5 oz self-raising flour
3 oz ground walnuts
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced

For the topping
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and line a 9 inch springform cake pan.
2. Place the raisins in a small bowl and cover with apple juice. Set aside to soak.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs and milk and beat well, adding a spoonful of the flour between each egg to prevent curdling.
5. Sift in the remaining flour, ground walnuts, baking powder and cinnamon and beat until well combined.
6. Pour the cake batter into the tin.
7. Arrange half of the apple slices on top of the cake.
8. Drain the raisins and scatter them over the apples, then arrange the reamining apple slices over the top.
9. In a small bowl, mix together a little sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle over the top of the cake.
10. Bake for 45 mins or until a cake tester comes out clean.
11. Sprinkle with a little more sugar and then leave to cool in the tin for 5 mins before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.