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Plum and Almond Cake

Posted on February 26, 2023 by The quirk and the cool

Stone fruit is in season in late summer here in Sydney. I love cooking with plums, particularly blood plums with their wonderful ruby red colour.

This cake is made in the form of a traybake, great for serving a crowd of people. It’s not too difficult, the only tricky part is roasting the almonds in the oven.

You could serve it on its own, or with a sprinkling of Demerara sugar, or make a simple lemon drizzle icing and haphazardly dress the cake!

Ingredients

100g blanched almonds

50g whole almonds, skin on

150g butter

150g caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond essence

3 free-range eggs

75g plain flour

1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

8 plums, cut into quarters or eighths

2 teaspoons Demerara sugar + extra for sprinkling

Lemon drizzle icing

150g icing sugar

Enough lemon juice to drizzle over the cake

Method
Preheat the oven 150 degrees C, 130 degrees C fan. When the oven reaches temperature, put all the almonds on a baking tray and cook until just brown, about 20 minutes.

Turn the oven up to 180 degrees C, 160 degrees C fan. Grease a 9”x 13” rectangular cake pan.

Blitz half of the almonds in a food processor until fine crumbs. Remove, and blitz the other half so that they are still quite chunky. Remove from the food processor. There’s no need to wash it – just use again for the cake batter.

Beat butter and sugar in the food processor until pale and well creamed. Add vanilla extract and almond essence.

Add the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour at the same time with each egg. Adding a little flour now helps stop the batter from curdling. Mix in the food processor until each egg is incorporated. Mix in the rest of the dry ingredients including nuts by pulsing carefully. Some of the nuts will still be quite chunky which will give texture to your cake.

Spread the cake batter in the pan, smoothing the top with a spatula. Arrange the plum pieces on top of the batter. Some pieces of fruit will stay on top of the batter, some will sink – it doesn’t really matter!

Sprinkle the Demerara sugar over the plum pieces on top of the batter.

Bake for 30 – 35 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. If the cake is browning too quickly, cover the top with aluminium foil to prevent burning.  When cooked, remove from the oven and leave to rest for 15 minutes.

When the cake has cooled slightly, carefully remove from the cake pan onto to a wire rack to cool completely.

You can serve as is, or with a sprinkling of Demerara sugar, or with a lemon drizzle icing.

Make the lemon drizzle icing by combining the icing sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and drizzle over the cake with a fork.

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Sugar Plum Fairy Cakes

Posted on February 16, 2022 by The quirk and the cool

Everyone loves a cupcake, and a fairy cake with its little cake wings is so pretty.

I recently picked up some sugar plums, a late summer fruit. These are delicate little plums, perfect for adding a sugar coating.

So with a nod to Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker and The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, here’s a recipe for little cakes with a sugar plum topping. I made 6 large cupcakes for the recipe, but you could just as easily make 12 small cupcakes.


Ingredients 

Little cakes

125g self-raising flour
125g caster sugar
125g butter
2 large free-range eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk

Creme Patissiere

240 mls milk
2 free range egg yolks
35g sugar
10g plain flour
15g cornflour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter

Sugar Plums

1 free range egg white
100g caster sugar
6 sugar plums or any small plums

Icing sugar for dusting

Method

For the cakes, preheat the oven to 180 degrees For this recipe you are making 6 large cupcakes – you should get 6 good size cakes from the mixture. Put 6 large paper cases in a Texas muffin tin.

Put all the ingredients except the milk in a food processor and blitz till smooth. Add the milk while pulsing to make a soft, dropping consistency.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, filling the cases equally.

Place the pan into the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until the cakes are cooked and golden on top.

Take the cakes in their cases out of the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.

To make the creme patissiere, whisk the egg yolks with sugar until pale and slightly thickened. Whisk in the flour and cornflour.

Put the milk into a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Pour about a third of the hot milk over the egg yolk mixture. Pour the whole mixture back into the saucepan with the milk.

Bring to a boil, whisking until the custard thickens. Cook for a couple more minutes to cook out the cornflour. Remove from heat, add the vanilla and whisk in the butter.

Pour the custard into a bowl and cover with cling wrap, pressing it directly onto the surface of the custard to prevent a skin forming.

To make the sugar plums, preheat the oven to 170 degrees C. Whisk the egg white to loosen. Sprinkle the caster sugar onto a plate.

Dip each plum in the egg white, then roll the caster sugar to coat. Place the plums in a baking dish lined with baking paper and place in the preheated oven.

Bake the plums for about 15 minutes or until the sugar has melted and the plums are crusty.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool. Once cool, cut each plum into two, removing the stone. The sugar will melt after a few hours, but the plums will still be baked and sweet.

To assemble the sugar plum cakes: take each cake and cut out the top of each cake. Cut each top in half. Put a couple of teaspoonfuls of creme patissiere on each cake.

Position the cut cake pieces on either side of each cake. Place one or two plum halves into the centre of each cake.

Dust the cakes liberally with icing sugar before serving.

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Peach, Plum and Raspberry Hazelnut Cake

Posted on January 23, 2022 by The quirk and the cool

Although we’ve had a tough summer in Sydney with so much rain, stone fruit is just starting to come into its own. Not the best stone fruit that we’ve ever had, but in late January it’s lovely to have some beautiful peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots. And of course berries are beautiful and plentiful and cheap at the moment!

I’ve been playing around with recipes involving stone fruit and ground almonds and hazelnuts. I’ve made a few upside down cakes which I’ve been very pleased with. This one is an “upright” cake with the fruit placed in the cake batter, some of it just showing through.

As usual, this is a food processor cake so it’s pretty quick and easy! You can serve it plain or drizzle some icing over the top, although it doesn’t really need it. It’s great served with cream, Greek yoghurt or vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients

150g hazelnuts

150g butter

150g sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

3 free range eggs

50g plain flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

4 peaches and blood plums cut into quarters or eighths slices

A handful of raspberries (about 10-12)

Drizzle icing

1 tablespoon of lemon juice or rosewater

Icing sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, 160 degrees fan. Grease a 22 cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper.

Put the hazelnuts in a dry frying pan and toast over a medium heat until just brown. Blitz half in a food processor until fine crumbs. Blitz the other half so that they are still quite chunky. Remove from the food processor. There’s no need to wash it – just use again for the cake batter.

Beat butter and sugar in the food processor until pale and well creamed. Add vanilla paste.

Add the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour at the same time with each egg. Mix in the food processor until each egg is incorporated. Mix in the rest of the dry ingredients by pulsing carefully. Some of the nuts will still be quite chunky which will give texture to your cake.

Spread the cake batter in the tin, smoothing the top with a spatula.

Arrange the peach and plum pieces in a circular pattern in the batter, pushing the pieces right into the mixture. Place the whole raspberries in between the stone fruit, just on top of the cake.

Bake for about 35 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. If the cake is browning too quickly, cover the top with foil to prevent burning. When cooked, remove from the oven and leave to rest for 15 minutes.

Carefully remove from the base of the springform tin, removing the baking paper.

You can serve as is, or with a dusting of icing sugar, or a lemon or rosewater drizzle icing.

To make a drizzle icing, mix a tablespoon of lemon juice or a tablespoon of rosewater with enough icing sugar to make a drippable icing. Drizzle over the cake using a fork. I added some pink food colouring for this cake.

Serve on its own or with cream or ice cream.

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White Nectarine, Ginger and Hazelnut Upside Down Cake

Posted on January 16, 2022 by The quirk and the cool

I love this cake as it’s so easy to make. It’s yet another cake based on stone fruit and a kind of frangipane mix, this time using ground hazelnuts.

You can make it with apricots, peaches and plums. And as it’s an upside down cake you get to see the lovely fruit on top of the cake!

Oh, and it’s all done in the food processor. Labour non intensive!

Ingredients

150g butter

150g sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

3 free range eggs

100g plain flour

100g hazelnut meal

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground ginger

4 white nectarines, cut into thin slices

1 tablespoon of stem ginger pieces, sliced thinly (5-6 pieces)

3 teaspoons demerara sugar

Method


Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C fan forced, 180 degrees C non fan forced. Grease a 22 cm springform tin.

Beat butter and sugar in a food processor until pale and well creamed. Add vanilla paste.

Add the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour, hazelnut meal, baking powder and ground ginger mix at the same time with each egg. Mix in the food processor until each egg is incorporated. Mix in the rest of the dry ingredients by pulsing carefully.

Arrange the nectarine slices in the springform tin in a circular pattern, slightly overlapping. Place the ginger slices in between the nectarine slices. Spread over the cake batter, smoothing the top with a spatula. Sprinkle the mixture with the demerara sugar.

Bake for 35 – 40 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. If the cake is browning too quickly, cover the top with foil to prevent burning.  When cooked, remove from the oven and leave to rest for 10 minutes.

Carefully invert the cake onto a plate to serve.

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Peach Pudding

Posted on July 31, 2020 by The quirk and the cool


I’m a big fan of late night radio – perfect for an insomniac. Recently I heard an interview with Alistair Wise from the bakery Sweet Envy in Hobart here in Australia.

Alistair was talking about winter puddings, a timely topic for our current chilly Southern Hemisphere weather.

Alistair gave a favourite recipe, off the cuff, to Philip Clark, the presenter of Night Life, a national nightly radio program. He called it ”Apple Novel“ – a simple pudding made with apples, poaching liquid and a butter/sugar/flour mix.

I jotted down the quantities and promptly set about making it a few days later. It was so easy and really sensational! I’ve made it twice with pears, and this time I made it with peaches.

Peaches are definitely out of season in Sydney. While shopping at Harris Farm Markets, I picked up some absolutely beautiful peaches from the US. I don’t know what variety they were, they were huge, sweet and very juicy!

So they made their way into my latest version of Apple Novel, now called Peach Pudding.


This dessert can be made with apples, pears or any stone fruit. And I really think you could use tinned pears, peaches or apricots – the advantage being you can use the tinned juice as the liquid in the pudding.

I used apple juice in my peach version, as the peaches didn’t need poaching.

This is such an easy recipe! You can mix it up in 5 minutes, put it into the oven and voila, your pudding is ready to eat in half an hour!

I’ve tweaked the original recipe, cutting down on the sugar somewhat.

Great recipe, easy make!

Ingredients 

3 large peaches*

100g self raising flour

50g butter cut into small pieces

100g caster sugar

250ml apple juice (or any other fruit juice)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Cut the peaches into quarters. Lay the peach quarters into a baking dish. I used a shallow cast iron pan.

Tip the self raising flour, butter pieces and caster sugar into a bowl and rub together into a breadcrumb consistency, a bit like making pastry. Add the apple juice and roughly mix together. The mixture should look curdled, but that’s ok as you’re not looking for a cake mixture consistency.

Pour the mixture over the peaches. Put into the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until the pudding is brown on top.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly. When you serve the pudding, there will be a lovely baked layer on top, and underneath soft fruit in a thick sauce.

Serve with thick cream or ice cream. Delicious served warm or even cold. And so easy!

*You could use apples or fresh pears, but you will need to poach them to cook them partially. You can then use the poaching liquid as the liquid in the batter.

 

 

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Summer Plum Muffins

Posted on January 31, 2020 by The quirk and the cool

Sydney in summer, January 2020. And what a summer. The drought and the bushfires dominate the literal and emotional landscape, as we swelter through hot, hazy and humid days.

Despite these conditions, there is still amazing summer fruit in abundance, to bake, preserve or simply to devour fresh as an antidote to the heat.

I love stone fruit in high summer. I’ve been jam making with apricots and with blood plums, fantastic for their rich ruby red colour.

I made muffins a while back with yellow fleshed plums, using my current go-to muffin recipe adapted from Matt Stone’s The Natural Cook Maximum Taste Zero Waste. Here is the recipe from 2018.

This recipe celebrates plums, baked in the muffin mixture and also as plum pieces on top of each muffin, but you could just as easily make it with other stone fruit – apricots, peaches or nectarines.

Ingredients

2 free-range eggs

140g raw sugar

1 Granny Smith apple unpeeled and grated

1 plum, diced

75ml vegetable oil

10-12 pecans, chopped (optional)

150g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp salt

3 plums, cut into segments, to decorate

A few pecan halves, to decorate (optional)

Method

Whisk the eggs together in a large mixing bowl and when  the mixture is foamy, slowly pour in the sugar. Keep whisking until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has doubled in size.

Whisk in the apple, diced plum and oil. Stir in the chopped pecans, if using. Use a spatula to gently fold in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger  and salt.

The mixture can be baked straight away but Matt suggests leaving it in the fridge overnight. This will give the flour a chance to hydrate and the baking powder to activate, resulting in a more consistent muffin texture. Even leaving the mixture for a few hours in the fridge is beneficial.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C fan-forced, 180 degrees C non fan-forced.

Grease a standard muffin tin and line 6 holes with squares of baking paper. Spoon in the muffin mixture, adding as many plum segments as you like on top to decorate, and pecan halves, if using.

Put the muffin tin in the oven and cook for about 25 minutes. Check the muffins at 15 minutes and every 5 minutes from there, using a skewer to check if cooked. From my experience, in my oven, they take about 20 minutes.

Remove the muffins from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 5–10 minutes. Remove them from the tin and place on a wire rack. I leave the baking paper on as the muffins are easier to store.

Serve warm or at room temperature. Great on their own, as they are so moist, but also good with butter, or Greek yoghurt and a drizzle of honey.

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Sweet and Salty Granola

Posted on January 16, 2019 by The quirk and the cool

There are a few recipes that I make on a regular basis, and I love to post new versions on the blog to show you what I’ve been making. Soon I’ll be getting ready to make hot cross buns. I’ll probably wait till March, even though I was shocked to find hot cross buns already in the supermarket after Christmas!

One of my favourite things to make is granola. I make a batch every couple of weeks, as I really need my cereal fix every morning. I’ve posted the recipe a few times already here.

I thought I would add this version as I’m particularly keen on it. But it may not be to everyone’s taste. As the title implies there is salt in this recipe. Quite by accident, I bought salted nuts instead of unsalted for the granola. They were delicious! I love the combination of the sweetness from the dried fruit and honey, with the saltiness of the nuts. And hey, first it was salted caramel and, then salted chocolate, so why not sweet and salty granola?

Ingredients

2 cups of rolled oats
1 cup of bran flakes or similar
1/2 cup of salted nuts like macadamias, cashews, walnuts, hazelnuts
A handful of mixed seeds like pepita, linseed, sesame
1/3 cup of honey, warmed to pouring consistency in a microwave
1/2 cup of any dried fruit – sultanas, raisins, apricots, cranberries, sour cherries.

Method 

Pre-heat the oven to 140 degrees C. You could try 160 degrees C for a quicker toasting but be careful you don’t burn the mix. Line a large baking tin with baking paper. You need to be able to spread the mix out so that all the mix is exposed to the heat.

Mix the oats, seeds and nuts together in a large bowl. Loosen the honey before microwaving with a little bit of water to make it more runny and easier to mix. Pour the warmed honey onto the mix and quickly stir it through. The mixture will be quite sticky, so stir fairly aggressively.

Spoon the mixture onto the baking paper in the tin, spreading it out so that it covers the base of the tin and there aren’t any big lumps.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until the mixture is golden brown and thoroughly toasted. You will need to turn the mixture over half way through cooking, so that the underneath mixture gets its time on top and gets toasted. The oven time is a bit of guess work – just keep checking and remove when the mix is golden and not burnt!

Let cool for 5 minutes then add the dried fruit, combining everything well. Don’t worry if there are some clumpy bits stuck together with honey – they are a bonus!

You can serve this granola in so many different ways. Milk and Greek yoghurt are favourites with me. I will always have fresh fruit on hand to add to the granola. In high summer in January in Sydney, berries are plentiful and so cheap! Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, all amazing, all wonderful, and I eat them by the punetful. And stone fruit too, is really coming into its own this month. Yellow and white peaches, apricots and nectarines, all delicious. And passionfruit is delicious any time of the year.

If summer fruit is plentiful, then I’m making jam. I’ve made lots of jam in this last week – apricot, blackberry, strawberry, mixed berry, and my new find mango! I will be posting recipes for these shortly.

I’ve been eating my sweet and salty granola with Greek yoghurt and lots of fresh fruit and a dollop of mango jam. A fabulous addition to breakfast! Just delicious! But eat your granola with whatever takes your fancy.

 

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Plum Muffins

Posted on March 24, 2018 by The quirk and the cool

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1720FAD7-FD24-44B8-9585-17636C82AAC5 I’m still celebrating late summer fruit in Sydney. Berries are still good, especially raspberries which are plump and juicy, and well priced. But the standouts for me are the last of the stone fruit – peaches and nectarines, and gorgeous super sweet plums of all colours.

So here is a recipe which celebrates plums, baked in the muffin mixture and also as plum pieces on top of each muffin.

The basic recipe is Matt Stone’s from his book The Natural Cook Maximum Taste Zero Waste, adapted here using smaller quantities and of course the star ingredient, plums!

Ingredients

2 free-range eggs

140g raw sugar

1 Granny Smith apple unpeeled and grated

1 plum, diced

75ml vegetable oil

10-12 pecans, chopped (optional)

150g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp salt

3 plums of various colours, cut into segments, to decorate

A few pecan halves, to decorate (optional)

Method

Whisk the eggs together in a large mixing bowl and when  the mixture is foamy, slowly pour in the sugar. Keep whisking until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has doubled in size.

Whisk in the apple, diced plum and oil. Stir in the chopped pecans, if using. Use a spatula to gently fold in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger  and salt.

The mixture can be baked straight away but Matt suggests leaving it in the fridge overnight. This will give the flour a chance to hydrate and the baking powder to activate, resulting in a more consistent muffin texture. Even leaving the mixture for a few hours in the fridge is beneficial.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C fan-forced, 180 degrees C non fan-forced.

Grease a standard muffin tin and line 6 holes with squares of baking paper. Spoon in the muffin mixture, adding as many plum segments as you like on top to decorate, and pecan halves, if using.

Put the muffin tin in the oven and cook for about 25 minutes. Check the muffins at 15 minutes and every 5 minutes from there, using a skewer to check if cooked. From my experience, in my oven, they take about 20 minutes.

Remove the muffins from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 5–10 minutes. Remove them from the tin and place on a wire rack. I leave the baking paper on as the muffins are easier to store.

Serve warm or at room temperature. Great on their own, as they are so moist, but also good with butter, or Greek yoghurt and a drizzle of honey!

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Peach, Passionfruit and Blackberry Meringue Trifle

Posted on December 30, 2017 by The quirk and the cool

F78F5F6D-F5A3-4779-9124-DBBB3EBE9FA4Here’s a fabulous trifle for a festive occasion! I created it for Christmas this year. It’s a lovely celebration of summer fruit, and is a different take on a traditional trifle with the addition of meringue and passionfruit curd.

You need to start with a pretty glass trifle bowl that will adequately display your trifle and its layers. You can really layer it any way you like, but starting with a cake layer and ending with meringue shards and peach slices seems a good way to go.

Here is the order in which I layered my version:

Cake
Peaches/ passionfruit
Passionfruit curd
Meringue
Cake
Blackberry compote
Custard
Cream
Meringue shards/peaches/passionfruit/individual meringues

52A88A87-81CA-40D9-AB69-B38A128CB1A1.jpegIngredients 

Meringue
3 egg free range whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup caster sugar
A few drops of yellow food colouring

Passionfruit curd
4 tbls sugar
Juice of 2 lemons
Pulp of 3 passionfruit
2 free-range egg yolks
2 tbls butter

Custard
3 large free-range egg yolks
35g cornflour
50g caster sugar
600ml milk
300ml cream

Blackberry compote
500g frozen blackberries
3 tbls sugar
2 tbls water

2 bought sponge cakes (you can make your own but it’s much less time consuming to buy them)

6 yellow peaches, cut into slices
Pulp of 3 passionfruit

1/2 cup or to taste of an orange flavoured liqueur. (I used Cointreau and Orange Curaçao)

300ml whipped cream

Method

Meringue
Preheat the oven to very slow – 135 degrees C. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.
Beat egg whites at low speed with an electric mixer until frothy, add cream of tartar and beat on highest speed until peaks hold their shape. Gradually beat in 2 tablespoons of the measured sugar and continue beating for 2-3 minutes. Add all the remaining sugar at once, fold in quickly and lightly with a metal spoon.
Using 3/4 of the mixture, spoon or pipe two discs, each about the size of the diameter of your trifle bowl, onto the prepared trays. With the remaining meringue, colour one half yellow, and put both meringue mixtures  into two piping bags. Pipe yellow and plain meringues, as many as the mixtures will make, around the edges of the baking trays where you have placed the discs.
Bake the discs and meringues for 1 1/2 hours. Leave in oven for a further 1/2 hour or until dry.

Passionfruit Curd
Place all the ingredients into a saucepan over a medium heat. Stir with a wooden spoon, making sure all the ingredients are amalgamated and the sugar is completely dissolved. Continue to stir until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Put aside to cool.

Custard
Put the egg yolks, cornflour and sugar into a large bowl and stir together with a whisk. Heat the milk and cream together in a pan until hot but not boiling. Gradually whisk into the yolks, then return the mixture to the pan. Stir over a high heat until the mixture just comes to the boil and the custard thickens. Take off the heat, cover and allow to cool.

Blackberry compote
Put the frozen blackberries, sugar and water into a saucepan and gently stir to dissolve the sugar. Bring to boiling point, turn the heat to low and simmer for about 10 minutes or until the fruit is softened and the liquid is reduced. Transfer to a bowl to cool.

Assembling the trifle
Line the base of your glass trifle bowl with half the cake, making sure there are no gaps. Liberally sprinkle over half the orange liqueur.
Scatter half the piece slices and half the passionfruit pulp over the cake. Spoon the cooled passionfruit curd over the fruit.
Now carefully place one of the meringue discs on top of the curd, trimming the edges if it’s too big. Place the rest of the cake pieces on top. If you think there is too much cake, leave some of it out. Sprinkle the cake with the remaining liqueur. Spoon the blackberry compote on top of the cake.
Carefully spoon or pour the cooled custard over the trifle, then add the whipped cream. Again, if you think there’s too much custard or too much whipped cream, add a little less.
To decorate the trifle, carefully break up the remaining meringue disc into shards big and small (so lots of broken bits don’t matter!). Place the rest of the peach slices and passionfruit pulp around the edge of the trifle and artfully place the meringue shards wherever you like.
Then finish by topping the trifle with the individual meringues.
This is how I made my trifle – I’m sure there are endless variations to the layering and presentation, so be creative!

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Apricot Almond Traybake

Posted on December 13, 2017 by The quirk and the cool

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Stone fruit is just coming into season in Sydney at the start of summer.  While peaches and nectarines are still a little firm, apricots are good eating.

The traybake is based on a recipe from Gabriel Gate from an SBS program, see here for the original. This is an ultra simple cake, made in a square tin in a shallow layer so that you end up with a traybake rather than a cake. I think it works quite well in this form.  I also made the whole cake in food processor, making it really simple.

Ingredients 

5 ripe apricots
150 g butter
100 g caster sugar
3 free-range eggs
50 g honey
120 g ground almonds
100 g self-raising flour
20 g flaked almonds

Method

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C fan-forced. Grease and line with baking paper a 24 cm square cake tin. Halve the apricots and remove stones.

Cream the butter and caster sugar in the food processor. Add the eggs and process till well mixed. Stir in the honey and then the ground almond and flour.

Carefully pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and arrange the apricot halves on top. Sprinkle with flaked almonds in the spaces between the apricots.

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Bake the cake in the preheated oven for  30-35 minutes until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool completely in the tin.  When cool, gently lift the whole traybake out of the tin using the baking paper.

Brush the top with a little warmed apricot jam to glaze and cut into squares to serve.

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