homebaking

Apricot Olive Oil Cake

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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

Honey Turmeric Cake

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Yo Joe,

Wow. This is a peng cake. Really good. It’s also yellow when you cut it open. Peng and yellow.

Look at this lil dude. He’s so cute and yellow.

This is one of my recipes. Think we spoke about the idea for it on the phone a couple weeks back. I’ve been thinking about honey and turmeric ever since. Honey and turmeric in cake form. Been doing quite a lot of reading about different honey cakes and yogurt cakes actually (haha oh dear). I wanted to put some kind of live culture dairy in the cake batter, something like yogurt. The acid in these kinds of dairy products makes the cake really light and soft because it breaks down the gluten in the flour. Pretty cool. I used sour cream in this cake (its cream that is thick and a bit sour, mmm).The taste is stunning and the texture is even better. Like the best sponge cake texture. Cool! 1 min of your life reading that you will not get back!

Because of the texture, flavours and colour, this is my version of a self-care cake. I quite like that.

Thought we should give our readers and followers some reviews of this cake – ‘Wow.’ (Dad), ‘A really good sponge.’ (Anna). Great, and that concludes the review section!

Ingredients

  • 200g plain flour
  • 100g softened butter
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 and 1/2 teaspoon turmeric (the powder. Not fresh, this isn’t a curry)
  • 100ml sour cream
  • 100ml honey
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For The Glaze

  • 60g icing sugar, sifted (add more if you want a thick icing)
  • 1 tablespoon boiling water
  • 1 heaped teaspoon honey

Method

Preheat the oven to 180. Grease a round cake tin with butter and dust over with some flour. Tip out the excess. A 20 cm round tin will work, I used a 20 cm bunt tin.

Start by measuring out the flour, you will need a bit of it when you add the eggs. Set the flour aside for now.

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until light and fluffy.

Visual Art No.2

Add both your eggs and a heaped table spoon of the flour. This will stop the eggs from curdling. Beat your eggs in for about 1 min.

In a separate jug or bowl whisk together the sour cream, honey and vanilla extract with a fork until there are no more large lumps of honey.

Add your baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, turmeric and salt to the flour you set aside earlier.

Visual Art No.3

Alternating between flour and sour cream, fold in the sifted flour mixture in three goes and the sour cream mixture in two goes, starting and ending with the flour mixture. Don’t over mix this, just until everything is combined. Once all flour and sour cream is combined the batter will be an amazing yellow and ready to pour into your cake tin.

Bake for 40-45 mins or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean and the cake springs back when gently pressed with a finger. Cool the cake in the tin for 10 mins before turning out.

To make the glaze mix together the sifted icing sugar, honey and boiling water. Spoon this all over the cake while it is still warm.

Mmmm it looks like honey and turmeric in cake form!! haha!

Have a good yellow cake day!!!

Love Caitlin xxx