Appealing Apples and Bad luck Bananas
Food superstitions and the cake that took me back...
I threw an apple peel over my shoulder this morning. It was an entire apple long and well worth it. My Scottish granny who was incredibly superstitious introduced me to the idea which apparently stems from back when apple peeling was a community-wide endeavor in New England. A young single woman would peel an apple in one long strand and toss the peel over her shoulder. If the peel landed in the shape of a letter, that was supposedly her future husband's initial. I’m not sure how accurate this method is for finding your life partner but I do know that it makes you a gun at peeling apples🍏
I love the stories around these quirky beliefs to do with food and remember as a kid we used to hear them a lot. If there was ever an incident where salt was tipped over and spilt there would be a flurry of pinching and throwing over shoulders in order to undo any harm created by the spill. I could never remember which shoulder but on researching this it’s always the left and with your right hand. The toss over the left shoulder is based on historical mythology that the Devil sits on your left shoulder and an angel sits on your right. Thus, tossing salt over the left wards off evil. Even Beelzebub struggles to get the job done with salt in his eyes.
Another food fable that haunts me is the “no bananas on the boat’ one. Fishermen are a superstitious lot. The fear of bananas on board seems to have its origins in the 1700s, when the Caribbean trade was in full swing. It was believed that boats carrying bananas had to move quickly to deliver the fruits before they spoiled, leaving little to no time for fishermen to troll for fish. There’s are also those that believed the bunches of yellow yummies were home to nasty creepy crawlies. Whatever it was, this is a belief that has stuck firm and I’ve even had my banana cake banned from fishing trips in the past, how rude.
This recipe for Appealing Apple Custard Cake is what got me thinking about these beliefs. The fact that after all these years I still try to get my apple peel done in one piece shows how engrained family traditions can be. I love this cake, it’s simple to make and has a minimal amount of sugar in it. Given that it’s full of delicious tart slices of apple it’s not a massive cake in size but it is dense, full of flavour and will have you holding your head high as you share it with people you love.
Appealing Apple Custard Cake
Ingredients
60g butter
2 eggs
½ cup sugar
¼ cup rice flour
¼ cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
About 4 large tart apples peeled and cored
Icing sugar to dust
Method
Preheat oven to 180 C / 350 F and set on fanbake.
Grease the sides of a 20cm springform cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
Melt the butter in a medium pot. Remove from heat, add eggs, sugar, flour, milk, vanilla, baking powder and whisk until it’s a smooth batter. Slice up your apples thinly and fold into the batter until they are well coated. Into the tin she goes and bake for 45 – 55 minutes. If it starts to brown too much reduce the temperature a wee bit.
Take it out, let it cool. If you’d like to dust it with icing sugar. I served mine with coconut yoghurt. Delicious with vanilla ice cream too ! Enjoy x