Hey Joe,
Here is the first cake I made in Glasgow. I was working on this recipe a couple of months ago and wanted to test it out again – can confirm, it worked.
Apricots and olive oil might sound like a strange pair but the flavours work really well together. There’s no butter in this cake, the olive oil is used as the fat. But, you want the olive oil for its flavour rather than to make the cake dairy free. Tiger (my flatmates name is tiger. She’s not a real tiger) can’t eat dairy so this is a cake that she can have! Woo! I think she liked it. I presented it to her on a plate, she growled a bit, picked the cake up with her mouth, dropped it on the floor and started eating it. I have never seen someone eat a cake so well – that’s my Tiger!
Ingredients
For the Apricot Compote
- 250g pitted apricots
- 50ml water
- 75g apricot jam
For the Cake Mix
- 100ml olive oil
- 100ml milk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 100g ground almonds
- 125g plain flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 180g sugar
If you can’t get hold of apricot jam, which is quite expensive, substitute it with 1 tablespoon of honey and 1 tablespoon of sugar. If your apricots are very ripe, add less sugar and honey.
LOL. I have a confession. I’ve just realised that there’s milk in this recipe. In case you didn’t know, milk is a form of DAIRY. I’m pretty pleased with my lil story about tiger, My dairy free friend, so I’m not editing the introduction to this post. Tiger, I am sorry that I made you eat dairy without you knowing it and I hope this dairy didn’t give you the shits.
Method
Pre heat your over to 180. Butter a round cake tin (mine is 20cm) with the most dairyist butter you can find.
In a small saucepan, heat your water, pitted apricots and jam (or sugar and honey) over a medium heat. Let it cook for about 5 mins, stirring occasionally, until the water has evaporated and the mixture is a loose consistency. Turn off the heat and set aside. If you want some whole apricot pieces topping your cake, like in the picture above, set some apricot halves aside for you to place on top of the cake before it goes in the oven!
Lightly whisk together the olive oil, milk, vanilla extract and eggs.
In a separate bowl mix the rest of the ingredients together – ground almonds, flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
Combine the wet mix with the dry mix, stirring until you have your cake batter.
Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin. Spoon the apricot compote over the batter in blobs. Using a skewer or knife draw a couple of figure of 8 patterns in the cake batter. What your doing here is marbling the compote into the batter. The less figure of 8s you do in the batter the clearer the marble pattern will be in the final cake.
Bake for about 35-40 mins or until a knife inserted into the cake comes out with not wet batter.
Have a good bake and a good cake,
Caitlin xxx
Cake On My Face 