Dorset Apple Cake

In my handwritten notebook full of recipes, this is titled ‘Jack’s apple cake’. I adapted it from a cake my sister-in-law’s mother made for her and my brother Alex after the birth of their first child. Our youngest brother Jack went to visit the baby, and ended up eating about nine-tenths of it. It was an enormous cake, obviously designed to sustain the new parents through their first week of sleepless nights, but Jack was so enamoured with it that I don’t think he even noticed the baby. Si