We have a couple more days in France before we begin our journey home to London (via a weekend in Cornwall). There are still about eight books that I want to read before the end of holiday and so for that reason, I'm going to leave this fairly short and sweet.
We bought some apricots the other day. They were a revelation. It was like I was eating an apricot for the first time. The flavour was so bright and vibrant and vivid. I wish I could say that we'd bought them from some wizened old lady who had picked the apricots that very morning from an ancient old tree in her garden. Actually, they were from the local supermarket (albeit one that stocks a lot of regional fruit and vegetables).
My parents went back to England for a few days last week. I decided to mark their return to France with a cake using the best of those supermarket apricots.
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Apricot and chocolate buckwheat cakeAdapted from this apricot, almond and buckwheat cake which was adapted from Love, Bake, Nourish by Amber RoseServes 12
I made this apricot, almond and buckwheat cake for a guest post on Sarah's wonderful The Vanilla Bean Blog. The week before, Laura from The First Mess had shared these little chocolate buckwheat cakes, also with apricots. We were both obviously onto a good thing. When I tasted the apricots down here, I knew I had to remake the cake using proper fruit, not the pale imitation we often get in England. Inspired by Laura, chocolate seemed like an excellent addition to the original recipe. I slightly tweaked the quantities too to fit the only cake tin that we have here.
6 small ripe apricots225g (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened90g (3/4 cup) buckwheat flour3 eggs40g (1/2 cup) cocoa powder90g (1 cup) ground almonds190g (3/4 cup) honeyA pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 170C/325F. Line a 10 inch round cake tin with well-greased parchment paper. Remove the stones from the apricots and cut them into 8 or 10 slices. Arrange the slices on the bottom of the tin, as artistically the mood takes you.
To make the cake, beat the butter for a couple of minutes with an electric whisk or a stand mixer. Add a little of the buckwheat flour and then beat in the eggs, one by one, until the mixture is smooth. Fold in the rest of the flour, the cocoa powder, the ground almonds, the honey and the salt.
Pour the mixture over the apricots and bake for 35 – 40 minutes until golden brown and firm to the touch.
Remove the cake from the oven and leave to stand for 10 minutes. Turn the cake onto a wire rack and peel off the paper.