Roasted quinces cake

Ingredients

Roasting the quinces

• 3 quinces, peeled, quartered and remove core
• 250ml water
• 250 g sugar
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 large piece of lemon peel (remove the white bit)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• optional: 1 star anise

Muffins

• 150 g softened butter
• 150 g brown sugar
• 1 table spoon spice mix: see this site for the recipe
• 3 eggs at room temperature
• 2 table spoons orange blossom water
• 150 g self-raising flour
• 1 roasted quince in pieces

Preparations

Roasting the quinces

Pre-heat the oven at 200ºC. Add all the ingredient in a Dutch oven o.s.s. Put it in the oven for an hour, covered with aluminium foil. If you want to turn the quince parts 1 or 2 times. No lower the temperature to 170ºC. Remove the foil and roast the quinces for another 45 minutes. They have to be completely soft when you stick something sharp in them. Remove the quince parts. You can cool down the liquid and use it as a syrup for mixing or to drizzle over the muffins. Leave one quince apart for the muffins and cut it in small pieces.

Muffins

Pre-heat the oven at 180ºC. Mix the soft butter with the brown sugar and spice mix until the butter is aerated. Then, one by one, add the eggs. Only add an egg until the mix has absorbed an egg completely. Finally, add the orange blossom water. Now spoon the flour and quince pieces into the mix. Fill the muffin shapes and put in the oven. You can also make a cake in a springform of ~22cm (which I prefer). The muffin cook time is about 15-20 minutes, a cake would be around 40 minutes. You can check by sticking something sharp in it and it should come out dry. Let it cool on a roster. You can serve it with the syrup drizzled over it.

It was very good with a Killahora Rare Apple Ice Wine 2018

Original recipe to be found here.

And here I was eating it with my friends: