Saturday 20 August 2011

Peach, Nectarine and Apricot Butter Cake


I'm doing pretty well with using my magazines at the moment. This is another cake recipe from BBC Good Food, this time from the August 2011 issue. The original recipe is for an apricot cake, and also has a flaked almond topping, but I decided to adapt it to use the mixture of stone fruit I had available at the time.

I changed the recipe slightly by using 150g butter and 50ml olive oil. This was purely out of curiosity at how the oil would work in the cake since the recipe called for melted butter anyway (always a bonus in my disorganised books!), and I honestly couldn't tell I'd swapped some of the butter for oil. Next time I might try swapping 100g butter for oil and seeing how that goes. I also swapped the 9" round cake tin for an 8" square and didn't do the topping. I sprinkled a little demerara sugar over the base of the tin, but I'm not sure you could tell by the time the fruit had leaked lots of juice and dissolved it all! 

The cake rose a little in the middle (as cakes do...) and so before I turned it out of the tin onto the wire rack, I levelled the top off so that when it was turned out the base (formerly the top) of the cake would be level on the rack and wouldn't cause the cake to break apart. I'm glad that I thought to do this, it worked well.

This was a fabulous cake. The sponge was really moist and close textured and a gorgeous colour and flavour. I loved the way the soft sponge contrasted with the lovely moist, gooey fruit at the bottom of the cake. In fact, I think next time I might make a shallower cake too, so that you get a higher ratio of the fruit at the bottom to the cake. This would be perfect served with some vanilla icecream and either a compote of the fruit, or perhaps a chopped nectarine salsa type effort for a truly delicious dessert.

8 comments:

Choclette said...

It looks delicious - peaches and cake are something I have yet to try. But I did make a nice plum cake recently. Your sponge looks just about perfect.

Kate@whatkatebaked said...

Another super recipe C! A perfect summer cake, it more than makes up for the soggy August we are having!

Chele said...

I am LOVING this cake, it has all my favourite stone fruits in it. Looks absolutely amazing ... going to have to check my supplies now so I can make this cake today!!!

Anonymous said...

I love these type of fruit cakes. It looks so lovely and moist.

Johanna GGG said...

love stone fruit in cakes - last summer found it so hard to find a cake recipe with fresh apricots - and I like your idea with olive oi - must try that

Caroline said...

Choclette - I love peaches with cake, the texture combo is great.

Kate - yes, at least the top of the cake is sunny, even if the weather hasn't been!

Chele - I really hope you like it if you make it!

SFS - it was a lovely moist cake, I really enjoy fruit on the bottom of my cake!

stugolfer1 said...

This is absolutely an amazing cake!! Great recipe. Thanks for the post.



Stuart

Doodle said...

Hello Caroline, thank you for sharing this lovely recipe and great post. I have just made this cake; using 150g of melted butter and 50ml of olive oil. I omitted the almonds like you and used a combination of white flesh nectarines and apricots. I'm just waiting for it to cool before I take it out of the time. I am not anticipating it to look as pretty and perfect as your cake does - the texture of your sponge looks brilliant, absolutely perfect. I'm concerned that my cake will be too moist and that the base (once turned out of the tin) will be too dry/crusty... If I applied a little syrup, it would just make the cake even more moist *eekk* - any suggestions? Thank you so much. Francesca xx

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