Apricot, Almond and Blackberry Cake

Last weekend was the wedding of a good friend of mine from secondary school and one of the requests was that guests bring a cake and the challenge was to have a slice of each cake at the reception (I don't think anyone managed this!). Rather than do the sensible thing and cook my tried and tested wholewheat banana cake, I decided to do that risky thing of trying out a new recipe the night before. I felt like doing something with apricots and scoured the internet until I came across this recipe. Then I decided to substitute some of the apricots for blackberries. The resulting cake turned out really nicely, and the two fruits complimented each other quite well.

I also made two cup cakes with this recipe mix, since of course me and Pete had to try the cake before taking it to the wedding, so if you wanted to you could make individual cup cakes instead. In this case, slice the apricots into quarters rather than halves and use one blackberry per cake.

 

Ingredients:

4 apricots

100g blackberries

200g caster sugar 

2 tbsp brown sugar

150g butter

3 medium eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract
milk

150g self raising flour (or substitute with 150g plain flour and 2 tsp baking powder)

100g ground almonds

1 tbsp almond flakes

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C / 350 degrees F / gas mark 4

1. Slice apricots in half, remove the stones, and place in a dish, sprinkling brown sugar over them. (You could also peel the apricots if you wish; I tried to but my apricots were too un-ripe. If you want the skin off, blanch the apricots in boiling water for 30 seconds and the skin should come off very easily).

2. Cream butter and caster sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time and beat into the mixture.

3. Add the flour and ground almonds and stir until mixed thoroughly.

4. Add the vanilla extract and stir through. Add milk until the cake mix is of desired consistency (not too thick but not runny either. I found a couple of tablespoons was enough).

5. Transfer the cake mix to a large, round cake tin (I used a 23 cm/ 9 inch tin). Arrange the apricot halves and blackberries however you want on the top of the cake. I ended up with a random pattern as I wanted to make sure that all slices of cake contained both apricot and blackberries.

6. Finally, sprinkle the almond flakes on top of the cake.

7. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes - 1 hour (25 minutes - 30 minutes if making cup cakes), until cooked through.