- Yes, I know, you're determined, aren't you?
He looks very sweet, but he can be a little bit naughty.
I'm Carolyn Robb, former royal chef
to Prince Charles, Princess Diana,
Prince William and Prince Harry,
and I'm going to make the most delicious
apple date and pecan cake,
which was always a great favorite
when served for afternoon tea.
(upbeat orchestral music)
As chef to Prince Charles, it was always really important
to use ingredients that were in season.
In the Fall, we have the most beautiful apples,
particularly at Sandringham House in Norfolk,
which we always visited at this time of year.
There were incredible orchards
with wonderful apples in them.
So this cake, which has apples, dates and pecans,
is perfect for an autumn afternoon tea,
particularly if people have been outside in the cold.
It's wonderful to come home to a nice hearty slice of cake.
It's quite funny that while this is a cake
that Prince Charles would serve,
it's not one that he would eat
because he really doesn't have much of a sweet tooth.
Before I start making the cake batter,
I'm going to preheat the oven to 160 degrees Centigrade.
This cake is full of wholesome ingredients.
It's got dates, it's got pecans.
Lots of lovely fresh apple,
and obviously a good quantity of butter and sugar
to bind it all together.
The first step in making this cake
is to prepare the wet ingredients.
So I'm going to melt the butter.
This recipe calls for quite a lot of butter,
but it makes it really moist and delicious.
One of the first things I learnt
when I cooked with my mum as a child
was breaking eggs
and how important it is to break them individually
so that if one of them is bad or you get some shelling,
you don't ruin the whole batch.
I use a knife to crack eggs,
but there are lots of different ways to do it.
You can crack it on a surface
or even on the side of the bowl.
I'm just going to whisk these eggs lightly with a fork
before mixing them in with melted butter.
I've left the melted butter to cool a little
before adding it to the egg, so it doesn't cook it
when you mix the two together.
I'm going to set the butter and eggs aside now
while I sift together the dry ingredients.
We're sifting the flour
because it always makes for a lighter cake
if you sifted the dry ingredients,
and also just in case there are any lumps
or anything in there that shouldn't be in there.
Not long after I'd started cooking for Prince Charles
I had my first experience of Sandringham.
I traveled there, arriving late on a Friday evening,
and it was a rather cold, dark evening.
I do vividly remember my first job
which was to be sent outside
out to the verandah at the back of the kitchen
with a huge sack of pheasants to pluck.
The autumn in England is the season for pheasant shooting,
so that time of year, pheasant was something
that we would quite often cook.
Now, for the baking powder, I'm going to add five teaspoons
and I'm going to add two teaspoons of ground cinnamon.
Lastly, I'm going to add in the mascabado sugar,
which I'm going to sift as well
because this does tend to have quite a few lumps in it.
Now we're going to mix this all together.
(cheerful orchestral music)
On the Sandringham Estate, which belongs to the Queen,
there are some incredible apple orchards.
And one of the things that I always looked forward
to the most when we went there
was the apples that we were going to be able to use
and the wonderful crates of apples
that would be delivered to the kitchen
fresh from the orchard.
Now I'm going to prepare the apples.
I'm not going to peel them,
but I'm going to dice them quite finely
into about a quarter-inch dice.
(upbeat orchestral music)
I think that dates are underrated,
and I know that they're not very often used
in cooking in America,
but I add them into this cake
because they add a lovely flavor of toffee and caramel.
Really important to remember
to take the stones out of these dates before I chop them.
Now I'm going to chop up the dates.
I'm going to cut them up quite fine.
Slightly finer than the apple.
And after that, the last thing I need to do
is to dice the pecans.
Before chopping the pecans,
take out a couple and save them for the top.
(majestic music)
Now I'm going to add in the pecans,
the apple and the date,
and mix them into the dry ingredients.
And then lastly, I'll stir in the egg and butter.
This seems like quite a dry cake batter
but because there's so much freshly diced apple in it,
the juice comes out of the apple
and that's what makes the cake really nice and moist.
Aside from cooking this cake
for royal afternoon tea parties,
it's always a great favorite for family and friends as well.
Now I'm going to transfer this
into this nine-inch springform tin,
which I have baselines and I have put butter on the sides.
I'm going to smooth out the top with my palette knife
because I'm going to add very thin slices of apple
so it needs a flat surface to sit on.
I'm going to use a mandoline to slice the apple.
It will slice it really thinly
and that means when it's cooking,
the edges will curl up beautifully
and it looks really pretty.
I'm going to start by just cutting off the end of the apple.
This is really sharp and really rather dangerous,
so you have to be incredibly careful
not to lose your fingertips.
I'm going to slice this apple
and I will do most of it.
(light orchestral music)
Now I'm going to arrange these slices
on the top of the cake in a circle.
(light orchestral music)
These apple slices are quite close together,
but during cooking, they do shrink quite a lot,
so I've laid them all round the outside
and a few in the center,
and then I finished with the two remaining pecans.
This is a really delicious cake
but as with all cooking,
it comes down to the ingredients that you use.
And Prince Charles was a great supporter and a great leader
of the organic movement.
He had one of the first organically certified
farms in the UK, and latterly,
the farm at Sandringham and the estate at Sandringham
has also become organic.
So the apples that we used there
were always beautifully, freshly picked organic apples.
Now I'm going to put the cake in the oven to bake.
I always stand it on a baking sheet.
This just ensures that the cake cooks through really well.
The cake's been in the oven for 45 minutes
and it's cooked now.
Once the cake is out of the oven,
it's time to prepare the apricot glaze
which is very simple.
We're essentially just using
a very good quality apricot jam
as the glaze for the top of the cake.
This is available readily in most supermarkets.
You just put it in a pan on the stove and heat it gently.
And now I'm going to loosen the tin and take it out.
Looks like it's come out really well,
so now I'm going to glaze it.
This is adding the final finishing touch.
The smell of the this cake
really takes me back to my time at Sandringham.
I have happy memories
of many wonderful afternoon teas that I prepared.
Although I always stayed in the kitchen,
I didn't go through to the front of the house,
I know that where the afternoon tea was served
was a beautifully elegant, white drawing room.
When we had shooting weekends at Sandringham,
generally, there were about 20 guests,
and in the kitchen, there would have been
three or four chefs, so we were kept quite busy,
because as well as feeding the guests,
we would feed all the staff members as well.
So there was always someone needing a meal.
Once I've finished glazing the cake,
we're going to leave it to cool for a little while,
and then it's ready to serve.
(majestic orchestral music)
This is definitely one of my favorite cakes
because it has so many different flavors and textures,
starting with the lovely, sticky, toffee-like dates
and the slightly tart, moist apples,
and then the crunch pecans,
and all of that has a layer of cinnamon.
It's a really delicious cake.
Eating this definitely reminds me of Sandringham
and takes me back to many happy times that I spent there.
You can find more recipes like this
in my new book, Tea at the Palace.
There are lots of wonderful dessert ideas as well
if you go to delish.com.
(upbeat orchestral music)