Apple Cake

This is a recipe of a Polish Apple Cake from my precious baking book I have. I baked it for a old colleague, also a good friend, who came to visit us with his family. We met after almost a year.
And despite my fears, it was appreciated a lot.

Preparation time: 1 1/4 hours
Baking time: 45 minutes
Baking temp.: 200°C (180 °C convection oven)

Ingredients:
The values in brackets are for a round (26 cm Ø) tin

200 g (150 g) soft butter
100 g (75 g) sugar
3 (2) eggs
4 (3) tbsp milk
1 vanilla bean or 1 tsp essence
225 g (150 g) all purpose flour
50 g (30 g) edible starch (e.g., cornflour, rice or potato starch)
50 g (40 g) raisins
50 g (40 g) currents
3 (2) tbsp Rum (I took hot milk instead)
50 g (35 g) sugar
750 g (500 g) sour apple varieties (Boskop, Granny Smith)
1/2 untreated lemon
1/2 tsp Cinnamon ( I used 2 pods of green cardemom, the seeds ground)
50 g (35 g) sugar
100 g (50-75 g) chopped or slivered almonds

Method:

1. Beat together butter with sugar till fluffy
2. Separate egg into egg white and egg yolk
   
3. beat into the buter: egg yolks, half of vanilla (essence) and milk
4. Mix flour, starch and baking powder. Add slowly to batter while beating
5. Wash the raisins and currents in hot water and soak in Rum or hot milk
6. Wash, cut and peel the apples into thin small or large slices and mix with lemonjuice
   
7. Mix together the raisins, apples, spices and sugar
8. Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C convection).
   
9. Grease the baking try (or round pan) with butter and spread the batter over the pan with a spatula
   
10. Spread the apple mixture over the dough and bake for 25 minutes
11. Beat the egg white with the remaining sugar with clean blades of an electric beater until stiff. Add almonds caredully
12. Spread over the cake, once done and bake further for 20 minutes on the lowest position.