apricot coconut cake
The apricot season is way too short in Sydney so when apricots appear in the fruit shop I buy a few to make apricot cake. This year I ventured out of my comfort zone and tried something new, a recipe I found in an old issue of Gourmet Traveller.
When I looked through the cupboard I had everything I needed except for rapadura sugar so I used brown sugar instead and went to work. I found the finished cake not quite sweet enough, maybe rapadura sugar is sweeter than brown sugar, so I've increased the quantity a little in the recipe.
Here's the recipe for you which makes an 8 inch round or square cake. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional gas oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.
Apricot and coconut crumble cake adapted from a Gourmet Traveller recipe
Coconut crumble
60 gm chilled butter, cubed
2 tbsp brown sugar
75 gm plain flour
a pinch of salt
2 tbsp shredded coconut
Method
For coconut crumble, rub ingredients in a bowl until coarse crumbs form. Place in the fridge until needed.
Cake
160 gm softened unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup caster sugar
Finely grated rind of 1 lime
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
160 gm plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
90 gm shredded coconut
125 ml well-shaken coconut milk
40 gm dried apricots, diced
8 small apricots, seeds removed and quartered
1 tbsp coconut flakes
Method
Preheat oven to 180ºC. Butter a 20cm round or square cake tin and line it with baking paper.
In an electric mixer, cream the butter, sugar, rind and vanilla until pale and fluffy (4-5 minutes). Scrape down sides of bowl and add eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping down sides of bowl between additions. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Stir in the coconut then add to the batter in thirds, alternating with the coconut milk. Stir in dried apricot, spoon batter into prepared tin and smooth top. Scatter the crumble over the cake batter then tuck in the apricot slices. Scatter half the coconut flakes over the apricots.
Bake in the preheated 180ºC oven until golden brown and centre springs back when lightly pressed (45-50 minutes). Cool in tin for 15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Sprinkle the rest of the coconut flakes over the cake before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature. Cake will keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Old habits die hard and even though this was a nice cake I felt the coconut in the cake batter over powered the apricots. The very next day, I went back into the kitchen and whipped up an apricot cake using my old recipe so I could do a taste test. Hands down my old cake was nicer. Maybe next time I could just top my apricot and almond cake with some of the coconut crumble instead of flaked almonds? Now there is a thought.
No photography this weekend as my studio aka the sunroom was flooded by torrential rain in Sydney, so see you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.
Bye for now,
Jillian
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