Thursday baking - Apricot & Prune Cake

As we bake our way through A Treasury of NZ Baking...


Apricot & prune cake was popular with mum and her friends in the 90s and I remember quite liking it too! This is the first time I've made this cake myself and it tasted so deliciously familiar. Given how much I love dried fruit (especially prunes) this is definitely a cake I'll make again.

The recipe says to bake the cake in a ring tin but any cake tin would do. I used a bundt tin, partly because the weighty cast-aluminum tin helps my inadequate oven to evenly distribute heat, but also because mum always made this recipe in a bundt tin and it always worked well. I didn't sprinkle the second half of the cinnamon mix on top (because the top of a bundt cake becomes the bottom) - I saved it for my next apricot and prune cake.

It's worth thinking ahead and soaking the dried fruit in tea - without this step, the cake becomes quite dry after a day or so. Not that it lasted that long anyway... we had it for afternoon tea on a Sunday and then I took the rest into work for morning tea the following day.

Apricot & Prune Cake - week six (Annabelle White)

Cake
3/4 cup chopped dried apricots
3/4 cup chopped pitted prunes
water or cold tea
170g butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups standard flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Cinnamon mix
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

To serve
Icing sugar

Cover the dried fruit with tea or cold water. Leave for a few hours.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Grease a 25cm ring tin.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Follow with the dry ingredients and milk. Lastly drain the fruit and fold through gently.

Combine the ingredients for the cinnamon mix.

Place half the cake mixture in the greased tin and sprinkle with half the cinnamon mix. Place the remaining batter into the tin and sprinkle with the rest of the cinnamon mix (unless you're making a bundt cake like me!)

Bake for 45-60 minutes, or until a skewer in the centre comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes.

This cake will keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container.

Delicious served with cream and a dusting of icing sugar.