Week 42 - Apricot and Marzipan Loaf Cake

 The combination of soft-dried apricots and chunks of marzipan produce a richly flavoured loaf cake.

The cake is pretty and special enough to bake in a round tin as a celegration cake.

- The Great British Bake Off.

Faff Factor = 7

Bake = 8

Keeping Up Appearances = 8

Total score = 25/30

Phew, I finally felt confident enough to give the new cooker a whirl and bake myself a cake.  After such an unhappy start in my kitchen the new cooker is now my friend.  It's taken a week for the temperature to settle in and it's finally running at around 5 degrees over, but I can compensate that with my tweaking of the knob and always using my tempearture gauge.

So back to my challenge and to try, once again, to get back on track (I'm now 3 weeks behind!).  This weeks offering is an Apricot and Marzipan cake.  I chose this recipe due to the method as I've not made a cake where you rub the cold butter into the flour to make brearcumbs prior to adding the wet ingredients.  All to do with science I suppose but the taste of the cake was a little different and special.  Very light and crumbly.

Another taste new to me, and one of which I found not to be to most peoples liking, is cooked marzipan.  It's rich almond taste and smooth texture added to the light and crumbly cake, however I think I cut the apricots up too small as you can see from the picture they are really little dots once cooked (lesson learned for this week) but this didn't distort the flavour.

To be perfectly honest this cake reminded me of Christmas and thinking about it some more it

would be a lovely alternative to a rich fruit cake. I also think it would be a great addition to a winter tea table all warmed up with custard (I'm now having a thought of baking this again for visitors over the festive season).

Whilst making this cake I really giggled to myself as I was thinking of all the bakers from years ago because no electronic implements were used, just my hands, a mason and cash mixing bowl and a wooden spoon, now you can't get anymore old fashioned than that!

Looking forward to getting back to regular posts again.

Toodle Pip

Lynetta Xx