Staycation Cake
Fancy an apricot, blueberry and orange cake? Made with ground almonds so it’s gluten-free? And topped with fruity mascarpone topping?
No? You want a salad!?! Get out of here!
But come back next week. I’ll have a delicious healthy salad for you then.
Originally I planned on making a fig, orange and honey cake. Which I would also top with mascarpone. Because figs, orange, mascarpone and honey – or icing sugar – or ginger syrup … mm… But I couldn’t find figs anywhere. So I ended up just making this up as I went along.
I did find these recipes helpful though –
- Greek Orange and Honey Syrup Cake with Yoghurt and Pistachios
- Lemon drizzle cake
- Orange Yogurt Cake Recipe
So it’s cake this week. But there should hopefully be more salads over the next couple of weeks. Going to get in tip-top condition in August. No second wave is going for floor me. Well, it might … but dammit I’m going to be ready for the fight.
This recipe though … this is not about being responsible and health conscious and what-not. No. It’s about taking it nice and easy. Have a break, have some staycation cake.
Ingredients
- 125g butter
- 150g caster sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 200g ground almonds
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 oranges
- 1 lemon
- 60g icing sugar, plus 1 heaped tablespoon
- 6 apricots
- 200g blueberries
- 250g mascarpone
- vanilla extract, optional
Instructions
- Grease a baking tin and line the bottom with baking paper. Turn on the oven to 160 C.
- Zest one of the oranges. Add the zest to the butter and caster sugar in a deep bowl. Beat together until fluffy.
- Juice one half of the orange and add to bowl. Break the eggs into the bowl. Mix the baking soda into the ground almonds, add to the bowl and mix together.
- Stone and quarter half the apricots and add to the cake mix. Mix in half the blueberries.
- Pour the batter into the tin and bake at 160 C for an hour.
- Take out of the oven when done and leave to cool a little for 15 - 20 minutes. While the cake is cooling juice an orange and one half of the lemon. Strain the juice through a sieve into a bowl and blend with 60g of the icing to make a drizzle.
- The cake will shrink a little in the tin. It will still be warm at this stage. Leaving it in the tin, poke the cake several times with a skewer or fork. Pour over the drizzle and leave the cake to cool completely - 30 minutes or so.
- Turn the cake out on plate and peel off the baking paper.
- Zest the remaining whole orange and place the zest in a deep bowl with the mascarpone. Juice this orange and the half left over from earlier. Juice the remaining half lemon also. Add the juice to the bowl through a sieve. Add the heaped teaspoon of icing sugar. Beat together well. Taste and add in a little vanilla extract if you like. It should taste gently sweet with just a little fruitiness. The cake is very sweet so the mascarpone doesn’t need to be very sweet but if it’s not quite sweet enough for you add in a little more icing sugar.
- Spread the creamy mix over the top of the cake. Stone and slice the apricots and place on the cream with the rest of the blueberries. Enjoy!
