Chocolate, Apple and Rum Cake

I have a glut of apples.  I've have been looking in a few books as to what to do with them.  I am prefering to use them rather than freeze them at the moment.  I found a few recipes for cakes, tea breads, scones and chutneys.  The first thing I decided on was Chocolate, Apple and Rum Cake.  Very nice!  I was going to do some chutney, but didn't quite get to it as HK and I thought it would be good to go and do a bit of clothes shopping for Mary-Jane and get her some long sleeved T shirts and tops, not that Autumn is upon us with avengeance.  I have all my ingredients (I hope!) to do two different types of chutney, and a few other bits and bobs that will either keep or can be frozen.

Chocolate, Apple & Rum Cake

4 Apples
125ml rum

200g butter
200g caster sugar
4 eggs
125g chopped walnuts
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
200g self raising flour

3tbs dark rum
50g sugar
50 butter

• Peel, core and cut apples into small pieces.  Cover and soak in the rum, set to one side
• Mix the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
• Mix in the eggs on at a time
• In a seperate bowl, add all the dry ingredients and mix together
• Pour dry ingredients into the batter
• Drain the apples using a sieve, add to mix and fold in
• Pour into a greased and lined 26cm springform tin.  Smooth the surface
• Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for approx 45 minutes.  I baked for 40 mins
• Leave in tin to cool, make holes in top with a skewer.
• Put rum, butter and sugar in a pan, gently heat until butter melted and mix is starten to thicken.  Allow to cool a bit
• Pour the topping mix slowly over the cake, allowing it to soak in through skewer holes.  I used a silicone pastry brush to spread the topping, worked well.
• Once cake is cool, remove from tin and eat!