Banana Apricot Cake

Whoa! Please excuse me while I admire my cake. When this thing came out of the pan, I was so proud of myself :)

If anyone of you is feeling nauseous at this moment, I apologise. There's no praise like self praise! (Trumpets blaring loudly).

The original recipe is Apple Apricot Cake but I was desperately trying to finish off a big comb of bananas, hence the substitution. I was hesitant at first, wondering if bananas would go with oranges and apricots. But Sonia's Six Threes Ice Cream convinced me that the orange part would be OK because her ice-cream is a combination of bananas, oranges and lemon. I will just have to take a gamble with the banana/apricot combo.

Many years ago, my auntie gave me a bag of dried apricots which she brought back from New Zealand. That was the first time I tasted dried apricots and I loved it so much. So much so that I finished the whole bag in one sitting and got myself into trouble the next day. Yup, fibre is good for you but when you consume too much, heh..heh...it results in many trips to the loo. 

After that incident, I did not get to eat dried apricots until my auntie's next trip back from NZ. Somehow, over the years I lost my taste for dried apricots. I don't enjoy them as much as I used to. However, I was curious what it would be like in a cake when I saw this recipe in the book Lovely Butter Cakes.

The recipe requires the apricots to be boiled with orange juice. That was kind of weird for me and I chose to soak the apricots in orange juice for about 3 hours (I saw this method in Chef Wan's Cookbook). I made one mistake. I should have cut the apricots into smaller pieces. That realisation came to me after I dumped the apricots into the batter. Since I have not mixed them in yet, I picked them up one by one and snipped them using my kitchen scissors. Still, they were not small enough (will take note in next bake).

I baked the cake in an 8" bundt pan because bundt cakes are so lovely to look at. By the way, this pan was given to me by my auntie. In fact she gave me two bundt pans. The other one is a 10" pan. Thank you Ee-Ee!

Although I buttered the pan very generously, the cake refused to come out when I flipped the pan over. I had to apply a few hard taps before it finally budged. And when I lifted the pan, yes, I shall repeat....this beauty greeted me. Hello, beautiful cake! (Trumpets blaring loudly again).

So how did it taste? I am sorry to say that in spite of it's stunning look, I was not very impressed with the taste. Don't get me wrong, the cake itself (without the apricot chunks) tasted very good. It was a good banana cake with orangey flavour and I loved it. But when eaten with the apricots it wasn't that great. All I tasted was the tangy apricot and it sort of overpowered the cake. Maybe if the apricot pieces were smaller and more evenly distributed in the cake, it would taste better.

So till my next bake, I leave you with this recipe taken from Lovely Butter Cakes with my notes in red.

Banana Apricot Cake (Originally Apple Apricot Cake)
Recipe source : Adapted from Lovely Butter Cakes (page 53)

Ingredients A :
- 250g butter
- 150g caster sugar (original recipe 180g)
- 280g self-raising flour
- 5 eggs
- 250g bananas, mashed (original recipe uses 250g green apples, peeled and grated into thick shreds)

Ingredients B :
-150g dried apricots (I recommend to cut into small pieces)
- Juice from 1 whole orange juice (original recipe 90g orange juice)
Note : Original recipe says to boil apricots in orange juice and set aside to cool. I instead soaked the apricots in the orange juice for 3 hours)

Method :
1. Generously butter an 8" bundt pan and sprinkle with flour and set aside (I put in the fridge)
2. Beat butter and sugar till fluffy.
3. Add eggs one by one, mixing well after each addition.
4. Add self-raising flour and mashed bananas. Mix well.
5. Add ingredients B and mix well.
6. Pour the batter into the bundt pan, tap pan on work surface to level the batter.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 160C for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
8. Cool on cooling rack for about 10-15 minutes and invert onto plate to release the cake from the pan.
9. Let cool before slicing.

This post is linked to Cook-Your-Books #2 hosted by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours.