When I stopped at the sour cherry place last week to place my order (for a somewhat obscene amount of cherries), I couldn’t resist buying a small container of apricots. They were cheap, and so enticing, but when I brought them home I knew that I’d once again been taken by temptation rather than logic - the ‘cots were in no shape to be eaten out of hand. In other words, they were just asking to be baked.
Inspired by Aran’s beautiful Olive Oil Sponge from yesterday, I decided to make my own olive oil cake and incorporate the apricots within. The final recipe was borrowed mostly from Emily Luchetti’s plum cake recipe. I’m on a bit of a Luchetti kick lately as I’ve borrowed a few books from the library, so it seemed a fitting opportunity to see if her recipe was adaptable enough for my purposes. It was indeed. The texture of the cake was light and fluffy, enriched with the mellow, sweet apricots - and great for breakfast. There’s a slight crunch of cornmeal, but it’s more on the cakier side than most cornbreads and cornmeal cakes.
You’ll need about 6 apricots for the cake - I had a few extra, which I sliced and cooked with some sugar, water, and a drop of lemon to make a delightfully sticky compote that helped enhance the apricots in the cake. For the olive oil, I used Zoë, a reasonable all-purpose brand, as I wasn’t sure how much of the oil’s flavor would remain in the cake after baking it. It turned out the flavor was really quite subtle, so it would be worth using a fruitier, more powerfully-flavored extra-virgin oil.