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Apple glut? Here’s something from Guernsey for you to try (gâche melée recipe)

Jon Hickman

• 2 min read
A tray of gâche melée, an apple cake, from Guernsey

Gâche melée is a local thing from back home in Guernsey. Our other key local cake is called gâche but the two are totally unrelated. If you’ve ever had Dorset apple cake, then you know the sort of thing this is: stick to your ribs appley goodness.

The recipe

My Mum’s method for gâche melée is as follows:

  • 1/2 lb butter / suet / margarine
  • 1lb sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1lb plain flour
  • 1 tsp ginger
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 3lb apples

You’re basically looking to make up a cake mix, and then add the apples to it.

  1. heat oven to 170C or gas mark 3
  2. butter your baking dishes (see note below)
  3. peel & slice the apples
  4. cream the butter and sugar
  5. beat in the eggs
  6. fold in the flour and spices
  7. fold in the apples
  8. cook

This recipe does one loaf tin and a sponge cake tin worth. We’ve always used metal dishes (enamel or non-stick) – some of the other recipes discuss baking trays and the suggestion is that pyrex is no good. Don't use a springform or similar or you'll get a leak. Mum used to use a big roasting tin for hers.

Mum’s notes say cook on gas mark 3 for about two hours, but you can get away with higher and quicker. Standard issue skewer test to check it’s done. If you make more than you can eat, wrap it up tightly and pop it in the freezer.

Oh, it's pronounced like this: "Gosh Meh-La".

The over wrought foodie blogging bit

😬
Edit, Sept 2025: I moved this down here because it's really cringe when people tell a story when you want a recipe. I cut down some other twee stuff from 2011 about apples and someone giving them to me via Twitter—2011 was weird—and scaled back the personal anecdotes too. The recipe also had some copy editing and I changed the photo, though it's not a photogenic cake at all.

So what does it taste like?

It's pure comfort food.

It’s what you eat on a late summer night when you’ve been swimming in the sea til past dark. It’s bonfire night on a plate, and the taste of lengthening nights as you head to Christmas. It’s a bowlful of my childhood.

There is a range of alternate recipes for gâche melée here, but I think my Mum's is decent.

If you want to let me know what you think (leave a comment here or on Bluesky).