Recipe: Honey & Co's apple and miso cake with butterscotch

February 28, 2018

We cook a lot with miso at home — and so should you. Like a sort of natural stock cube, it gives a good, tasty base note to everything you make. We add a teaspoon to the pot when cooking brown rice for our Asian-inspired rice bowls — a favourite dinner of ours — as it gives it a bit of a boost that you can’t really get in any other way. We rub it all over fish and chicken before roasting, for added depth, and we sometimes mix it with roasted walnuts and a little walnut oil to make a killer dipping sauce that works brilliantly with broccoli and other greens.

We never used to bake with miso, but we do now. Sarit was walking around the flat and the restaurants for a couple of days humming a catchy little ditty: “Apple/miso/butterscotch, apple/miso/butterscotch . . . ” I was sceptical at first, as I prefer my sweets and savouries to be separate. As usual, Sarit paid very little attention to my reservations, and went into the kitchen to see what might emerge from her little mantra.

I am a believer now. The crunch of the oats, the caramelised apples — juicy, sweet and tart, melting into a light buttery sponge that is magically kept on the edge of sweetness — you wouldn’t know it’s miso that does it. I was just amazed at how well it all works together. This is not simply another apple-cake recipe — it is the one to end all apple cakes. It uses the now slightly old-fashioned method of yeast as the raising agent. Don’t be afraid, it’s no different from using baking powder, but it really works with those miso notes.

But the miso butterscotch — over-gilding the lily perhaps? A cake this good certainly needs no adornment but, oh my, is it good, and you’ve opened the pack of miso already . . .

Apple and miso cake with miso butterscotch

To make a small 7in cake that will serve a greedy four for dessert.

For the caramelised apples

Ingredients
40g	butter
2	large apples, peeled, quartered, cored and cut into chunks
30g	honey

For the cake batter

Ingredients
140g	butter at room temperature
125g	icing sugar
	Zest of 1 lemon
20g	light miso paste (preferably white, but the light orange one also works well)
2	eggs
1 tsp	dried active yeast
2 tbs	whisky (optional)
125g	plain flour
40g	rolled oats (keep half for sprinkling over the prepared batter)
½ tsp	ground ginger
	Pinch of salt
	All the cooked apples (as per instructions above)

For the miso-butterscotch sauce

Ingredients
30g	butter
20g	honey
20g	miso paste
100g	caster sugar
100g	double cream
1 tbs	whisky (optional)

Heat the butter (for the apples) in a frying pan on a medium-high heat. Once it has melted add all the apples and cook until they start to colour all over, flipping every 20 seconds or so. The whole process will take about five minutes. Add the honey and remove from the heat. Set aside until you make the cake batter.
Lightly butter a small cake tin and heat the oven to 170C (fan assist).
Place the butter with the icing sugar, lemon zest and miso in a food processor and blitz until it becomes creamy. Mix the eggs with the dried yeast and whisky (if using) and add in a slow steady stream to the butter until it is all combined. Add the flour, half the oats, ground ginger and salt. Mix well. Add all the cooked apples and the juice they produced. (Keep the frying pan to one side to make the sauce — to avoid creating more washing up.) Fold the apple into the cake batter and transfer to the tin. Rest for 10-15 minutes.
Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for 20 minutes. Then rotate and bake for another 10-15 minutes until the cake feels nice and bouncy. Remove and cool a little in the tin.
To make the butterscotch sauce, return the frying pan to a medium-high heat and add the butter, honey, miso and caster sugar. Mix well with a wooden spoon and stir constantly until the sugar melts and it all comes together to form a smooth caramel. Continue cooking for a couple of minutes until the colour turns to a lovely amber.
Remove from the heat and continue stirring while adding the cream in a steady stream. Finally, add the whisky and stir to combine.

You can serve the sauce warm, or just set it aside until you are ready — if you do this, warm it carefully again before serving. But do not put it in the fridge as it may set solid. Serve the sauce with the warm cake and, if you really need it, a little vanilla ice cream.

honeyandco@ft.com

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