Almond Pudding Cake for Augustines Apricots

I've been experimenting with my favourite pudding cake recipe to showcase Augustines of Central preserved apricots.

Augustines of Central apricots are stocked in Auckland in the Fine Food section of Auckland's Smith and Caugheys department store.

Our son Gus is the producer of these perfect preserves and he gave me a challenge recently. Could I find a good cake recipe for his apricots? Gus is an excellent chef but really cakes are not his specialty. He was never the one hovering around the cake mixer as a child.  First up I tried a rustic cake recipe from Nigel Slater that Gus suggested.

It was good sized cake but I felt the apricots were a little lost in the cakeyness.

So I turned to my often used Almond Pudding Cake recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "River Cottage Everyday". It's a light cake with a higher ratio of fruit to cake.

A pudding cake can be served warm as a pudding or dessert with cream, custard or yoghurt, or cut up cold with a tea or coffee.

The original recipe uses sweet dessert apples that keep their shape. (Cooking apples or tart apples have too much malac acid to keep their shape). I have used pears and they work really well so try some of those sweet Winter Nelis pears featured in my previous post.

I used OOB organic blueberries from Omaha north of Auckland.

My first experimentation with the Almond Pudding Cake recipe was to use Gus's suggested combination of blueberries and his apricots. I liked this idea for three reasons. First, using two summer fruits preserved in time, one quick frozen and the other in a preserving jar.  Second, using fruits from two ends of New Zealand - north of Auckland for the blueberries and Central Otago for the apricots. Thirdly, the colour combination is gorgeous.

I decided to make this cake again to take to our community garden's work day shared lunch to get some feedback.

This time I cut up the apricots to ensure everyone would get some apricot and to make it more like a cake than a pudding.

I got a great response from my fellow gardeners but I felt it didn't really need the blueberries. The apricots could stand on their own. So too could the blueberries work solo as a feature fruit in this Almond Pudding Cake.

Apricot and Almond Pudding Cake

This cake recipe is for a 20 cm springform cake tin, but as I only have a 22 cm tin so used that. It still works but the cake doesn't reach quite the height it would in a 20cm tin. It comes out a little more like a flan which is fine for a dessert.

Grease your tin and line the base with baking paper and preheat the oven to 170°C.

Ingredients:

150g butter softened

125g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

1 tsp almond essence (optional - if you like extra almond flavour - I prefer not to add this)

75g self-raising flour

75g ground almonds (or blanched almonds whizzed in a food processor - and I have used whole almonds ground into a meal as well)

Pinch of salt

For caramelizing of the fruit:

8-9 Augustines of Central apricot halves

25 g butter

1 heaped tbsp of brown sugar

To save time and effort just place the apricots on top without the caramelising as unlike the apples the apricots are already cooked. But I enjoyed the extra sweetness as the apricots are lovely and tart and the caramel does create a rich coloured crust.

If using other fruits than the apricots like the original apples you will need 3-4 apples or pears, or around 1½ cups of frozen berries.

It's also an option to add a little cinnamon when caramelising the fruit.

Method:

Sift the self raising flour, keeping aside 1 Tbsp of flour and then mix in the ground almond or almond meal. The almond meal is made from whole almonds not blanched ground almonds.

It's important to beat really well the butter and sugar until the sugar almost melts. The secret is to just soften the butter so that it will cream or fluff up.  If too melted it will become a sugar slurry.  Many a time I have left the bowl in the oven too long.  You can fix this by quickly taking out the butter and sugar from the hot bowl and throw into the freezer for around 10 minutes and then repeat the beating process.

It's much easier to use a cake mixer, but you can opt for a bit of a workout and beat with a wooden spoon.  Add the eggs one at a time.  To prevent curdling add 1 Tbsp of the flour measurement with the second egg.

This creaming process will ensure your cake is light, as will sifting the flour.

The final step is to fold in the dry ingredients.  It's important you fold rather than stir or beat to keep the mix light and airy.  My little kitchen helper, Beau, filmed me demonstrating this action.

YouTube...click on this link: Beau filming folding flour for cake

One of the perks helping with baking for Beau is getting the opportunity to lick the mixer.

Spoon the cake evenly into the prepared tin. It's best to start the caramelising while making the cake to ensure the cake goes into the oven quickly.

Melt the brown sugar and butter in a heavy pan and let it sizzle to caramelise a little.  Then add your fruit.  I put the apricots cut side down and only for a minute or two. The apples and pears need to partly cook for about 5 minutes. Keep the pan moving so that they don't stick.

Now it's time to place the fruit on top of the cake mix.

The apple and pears I would do as Hugh suggests and slightly dig them into the cake mix so that they are in the middle of the cake.  I prefer to just place the apricots on top.  The cake will rise around them but it's nicer to see a glimpse of their colour on top of the cake.

Pour over the caramelised juices and bake for around 50 minutes at 170°C.  Be guided by the smell - if you can smell it, the cake is probably getting ready - but to make sure test with a skewer into the centre to see if it comes out clean. Another indication that it's cooked is when it begins to shrink from the edge of the pan.

Augustines apricots on the production line.

Preserved apricots contain as much vitamin A, antioxidants and minerals as a fresh apricot  Unripe fruit will only have half the vitamin A compared to a ripe apricot. All of Gus's apricots are tree ripened so by staying on the tree longer Augustines of Central preserves will have maximum vitamin A content.

Juicy apricots on top of other stone fruits from Seamans on Basil Road off Meeanee Road, Napier

There is nothing more delicious than a tree ripened apricot and as a fresh fruit it's a low calorie fruit with loads of nutrients including vitamin C and soluble fibre. But it's not easy sourcing sweet fresh apricots.  The best apricots in New Zealand come from Central Otago and Hawkes Bay and to get the best, you need to buy from roadside stalls or the excellent Hawkes Bay Farmers Market in Hastings every Sunday or Otago Farmers Market in Dunedin every Saturday morning over the summer.

Not that most of us have to be persuaded to eat an apricot as they are delicious. But it's interesting that apricots, raw, cooked or dried, are particularly good for improving eyesight especially for those of us with ageing eyes who spend a lot of time in front of screens being exposed to harmful blue light.

I've succeeded in my small challenge to find a cake recipe to complement Gus's preserved apricots. It's also a recipe that will work with any seasonal fruit.  

Photos of Gus preserving pears by Photo by Mickey Ross of Micimage

Gus has a much bigger challenge ahead.  He has to source more Central Otago spray free orchards because his 2015 stock has already sold out and more stockists are lining up to stock Augustines of Central in 2016. 

The Good Oil on Southern Walnuts

 As I step off the plane and take in that first deep breath of chilled, clear, Southern air, I rejoice to be back in Dunedin.  Just down the road, beyond the airport, an enterprising pair have set up a roadside stall selling walnuts. Walnuts, like people from the South, are hardy and thrive in a cooler climate.

Walnuts are close to my heart because they connect me to the South and are a reminder of when my Mum lived in Central Otago with a massive walnut tree on her property.   

Looking rather strange and wrinkly, walnuts are the second most popular nut in the world.  Nuts in general are good for us, but walnuts excel in the health stakes.  They are great for your brain (they look a bit like a human brain).  They help ensure a good night's sleep and keep your heart healthy.  

Back home in Auckland with my roadside walnuts and a bag of sweet pears from my sister's orchard, my first thought is to make one of my favourite salads.   

Pear and Walnut Salad

First, roast shelled walnuts  (as many as you like but at least 1/2 a cup) in the oven with a little oil and 1/2 to 1 tsp of ground cumin.  This should take as little as 8 minutes in a moderate oven.

Keep a watchful eye on the walnuts as they easily burn.  Roasting improves their flavour and adds crunchiness to the salad.  

While the nuts are roasting, slice up the pears.  It depends on the pear whether or not you decide to keep the skin on.  Not peeling is the healthiest option.  

This is just one large pear I sliced and if you have a pear that is perhaps a little hard and not soft and juicy like this one, then a good trick is to also roast the pear slices.  Cooking them softens and makes them sweeter.

To avoid the pear browning with exposure to air, I slice them into a bowl and squeeze half a lemon over the fruit.  If roasting your pears, also add a little oil.

The third important ingredient is cheese.  I use blue cheese but I had half a block of feta that needed using and I discovered the sharpness of the feta goes particularly well with the sweet pear and the earthy walnuts.

The pears, walnut and cheese are laid out on a bed of green salad.  I am lucky enough to still have lettuce and some rocket growing but this salad would also work with a base of young spinach.   

Final touch is a drizzle of my favourite oil which is usually avocado oil infused with lime, but any good oil would do.  Walnut oil would be the ideal.   

Since discovering the power of walnuts, I decided to buy a small bottle of walnut oil. The only walnut oil I could readily find came from France.  In Canterbury where walnuts grow very well a company called A Cracker of a Nut has set up a factory making walnut products including walnut oil from nuts they purchase close to home and from all over New Zealand. I will let Professor Geoffrey Savage from Lincoln University convince you on the Health Benefits of Walnuts. 

The colour of butter - Walnut oil from A Cracker of a Nut

I am keen to track down a local source of The Golden Oil so named because of its wonderful colour. It's an expensive oil so I would only ever use it for salads, as a dipping oil or to brush over food as a finishing oil.

In our house we have also begun to use the oil for its other external uses.  Walnut oil helps relieve psoriasis, gets rid of wrinkles, massaged into the scalp will relieve flaky scalp and can get rid of fungal infections like athlete's foot.

The walnut tree in Clyde; Mum on the bike shows the scale.

At my mother's property in Clyde, Central Otago,  there was a massive walnut tree. It was a constant job collecting and drying walnuts when they turned brown in March or April and dropped from the tree.  For those of you lucky enough to have walnuts growing in your garden there is some good advice on Harvesting Walnuts.

So when the Stonehouse company approached her in the early 80's to purchase half of the tree's production while they were still green to produce pickled walnuts, she jumped at the opportunity.  I am sure that tree is still being harvested by Stonehouse pickled walnuts today.

I haven't tried the Stonehouse walnuts that can be found in most deli food stores around New Zealand because I have been gifted pickled walnuts from two adventurous preserving friends at different times. I still had a large Agee jar of pickled walnuts in our Dunedin pantry when we made the shift north.

The process of preserving walnuts is long and complicated,  so I just couldn't leave Ken's jar of walnuts behind. The pickled walnuts migrated north with us.  I opened the jar the other day to try what the English (who first began pickling walnuts) state as a winning combination - Stilton  cheese and pickled walnuts.   

And they are right.  You need the sharp cheese to counter the pickle - together they are a delicious mouthful.  You don't necessarily need to use Stilton - any strong flavoured blue cheese would do.

Having run out of capers, I suggested to Peter to replace capers for pickled walnuts for his oven baked lamb chops with garlic, thyme and rosemary.   The pickled walnuts worked really well with the flavour of meat so that forgotten jar of pickled walnuts is now having its time out in the sun in our kitchen

It's not just in savory that walnuts enhance.   I used some of my freshly cracked walnuts for an Oat Pancake breakfast.  First I roasted the nuts in a small skillet on the stove top, and while still hot added a tablespoon of honey.  The honey sizzled and coated the walnuts in a devine sweetness.

The oat pancake recipe you can find on my posting "The Secret to Light and Fluffy Oat Pancakes" October 2013.  I complemented the pancakes with Augustines of Central preserved Vulcan apricots, bacon, yoghurt and the honeyed walnuts.

A perfect start to a lazy Sunday.

It does take time to crack your own walnuts but walnuts keep for longer in their shells.  Once shelled I always keep the jar in the fridge to prolong their lives.  A rancid nut is not good for you and tastes terrible.

My Mum would spend winter nights in front of the fire and television cracking walnuts with this well worn nut cracker.  She wrapped the handles in soft material and covered with parcel tape to make the cracking easier on her hands.  It's 

now one of my most treasured kitchen gadgets. Every time I use it I think of her 'good life' years in Clyde when she tirelessly harvested and cracked walnuts to gift to family and friends. She was not only giving us something delicious but a gift of natural medicine.