Streusel sussed

I made a red fruit streusel cake today and feel I have sussed the method. I used this recipe (without the video; someone just sent me a simple version) but tweaked it a bit because I found the cake layer of the first apple streusel cake I made a bit dry. My tweak was to use two eggs instead of one egg and some milk. So this version has no milk in it and the cake was indeed less dry.

Having read through the instructions twice, I also simplified them for inclusion in my little recipes notebook, so a paragraph on how to make the streusel topping became: Rub butter into flour, then add the rest (which could be shortened even further to rubbing in method).

Similarly, the paragraph about making the cake layer became: creaming method.

<< the moment of truth before putting the fruit layer on top of the cake batter.

The fruit is some slightly sweetened and lightly stewed raspberries and blackberries that I had in the freezer. Before adding them to the cake I stirred in a heaped tablespoon (roughly) of dry semolina to help soak up the juices.

Seems to have worked. Tasted good warm with cream.

So, yeah, I've sussed streusels: essentially a fruit crumble with cake underneath.

Toad claims not to like hazelnuts or walnuts but when walnuts are ground and put into banana muffins, and when hazelnuts are chopped and toasted and put into streusels, he doesn't have a problem with them! Eating raw nuts on their own is indeed a quite different experience from eating them mixed in with other ingredients in cooked food.

As I told someone via Twitter, I had to hide the last piece of the apple streusel or Toad would've scoffed it and I wanted it for breakfast. #cakewars ;)

Another tweak I might try is to go back to the one egg plus milk idea but to make the apple layer thicker, and to use cooking apples rather than eaters for a bit more apple zing.

And yes, those are staples in my cake tin liner. Doesn't everyone have a tiny stapler in their baking kit?