Bakes and Buns

The baking humours are still on me and today was another cold day so baking in the kitchen seemed a good way to go.D.kathryn saw the Baily's cheesecake on a previous post and put in her order for one for the weekend.Something I should have mentioned with the recipe was because marshmallows are used instead of gelatine this is a very sweet dessert and the calories per slice are probably off the scale!
A second Christmas cake was mixed last night and went into the oven first thing this morning, and once the oven was on I just kept going.
My pastry is melt in the mouth and is from Catherine at over on Dispatches from the Deise blog who has lots of mouthwatering baking and cooking going on.
I lightly cooked the apples earlier in the day for the apple sponge and allowed them to go cold, the pastry was made and rested in the fridge until needed.I lined the pie tin and rolled out the scraps to line a 12 bun cake tin, waste not want not!
The apples are spread over the pastry base, I used all of them as I like plenty of apple in mine, you could use some of the apples in the bun tins also but I used some of the rhubarb and fig jam which I made during the summer.

No need to spread the sponge mixture just put it in blobs around the filling it levels out during the cooking, I have learned over the years not to put too much in the centre or it ends up slightly undercooked.
The sponge mixture is;
4 ozs butter/marge
4ozs caster sugar
6ozs flour
2 eggs
I used Gas mark 5 for the small cakes and gas 4 for the larger pie tin.
Sprinkle caster sugar on the pie while still warm, I iced the buns but this is optional.
I attended a Christmas cookery demo many years ago in the ESB showrooms which were then in Patrick St in Cork. The demonstrator said when using cherries for decoration purposes you could cut 24 pieces out of one cherry which is enough just to pop on a small cake. I have tried numerous times over the years when I think of it but the most I have ever managed is 16.