Live Love Eat Awards at the Deer Park Hotel, Honiton, Devon

I have just been to the inaugural 2014 LiveLoveEat Food and Drink awards ceremony at the fabulous Deer Park Hotel, set within 80 acres near Honiton, Devon.  It was raining so I didn’t get to explore the 80 acres of land – but it looked good.  I met some lovely people (‘Hi’ to Choclette and the Pig and Whistle!) and had some delicious food.

The food was great and all sourced in the West country.

It was a lovely venue and can really imagine having a wedding there.

Susan from Devon Life said that she really enjoyed staying at the hotel overnight – and so had her dog!  They are a very dog-friendly hotel. They are welcome to stay in rooms and there is even a pooch pamper area.

There was much excitement about the new treehouse suite which will soon be a feature of the hotel – a great idea for a special anniversary or the first night of wedded life!  The ground floor communal areas looked well-maintained and attractive.

 Overall, a great place for a celebration, a function or a special place to stay.  The location is quiet and beautiful and the hotel owner seems ebullient and fun.

Devon Apple Cake - Award Winning Recipe

This is a regular autumnal warmer in our house that is dead simple to make and uses up at least one or two of your surplus cooking apples at this time of year.  I won second prize with this cake in the local Village Show in early September.  Yes, I forgot to take a picture of it when it was whole - too eager to eat it.  It's a basic sponge cake and then has a lovely crumbly sugar and cinnamon topping.

Ingredients:

225g cooking apples (peeled, cored and chopped any size)
juice of half a lemon
225g plain flour
7.5ml baking powder
115g butter
165g sugar - I've used caster, soft light or dark brown - all good
1 beaten egg
30-45ml milk
2.5ml ground cinnamon

1 - Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line an 18cm round cake tin. **

2 - Toss the apple with the lemon juice and set aside.  Sift flour and baking powder then rub in butter until it resembles breadcrumbs (I throw this in the food processor)

3 -  Stir in 115g of the brown sugar (keeping 50g aside), the apple and egg and mix well adding enough milk to form a soft dropping consistency.

4 - Transfer batter to tin.  Mix the remaining 50g sugar with cinnamon - sprinkle this over the cake mixture.  Bake for 45- 50 mins until golden.  Leave to cool for 10 mins in the tin before transferring to wire rack and your mouth.

**I love these Lakeland cake tin liners for lining tins:

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/baking-parchment-cake-tin-liners/F/keyword/cake+liners/product/5550_5551