Gluten-Free Butterscotch Apricot Cake

This recipe makes a delicious and gooey butterscotch cake topped with caramelised seasonable fresh apricots.

Make the most of this summer stone fruit in this cake that can be served at morning or afternoon teas or as a warm or chilled dessert with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

I am not going to lie, anything with caramel in a cake or dessert gets my attention. Every time I make this cake, it gives me goosebumps, it’s that good!

Aussie Inspiration

I was fortunate to be given a huge bowl of fresh apricots by my friendly neighbours recently, so without a second thought, I headed to my favourite cookbooks to get some inspiration to use all these apricots.

Belinda Jeffery has a gift for producing nostalgic and delicious Australian baking recipes. I settled on her butterscotch peach cake, one of my favourites, and naturally swapped the fruit for apricots and tweaked the gluten ingredients to make this incredible gluten-free cake.

Other fruits to use

Besides using fresh apricots that are in plenty supply in Vienna now, other stone fruits such as peaches, nectarines or plums work well in this cake. As do pears and apples, but these can be used in Autumn when stone fruit slows down. It’s well worth making the most of seasonable fruit whenever we can, not only are they more affordable, but are at their prime in terms of taste and nutrition.

Fresh versus tinned fruit

Fresh is best in this cake recipe as the tinned fruit tends to be soft already and can cook into a pulp but if you are not bothered by the mushy appearance, the flavour will still be there when using tinned. Make sure to remove the sweet liquid and pat the fruit with some paper towels to take any excess moisture away.

GOOD TO KNOW!

• Use a sealed tin not a springform tin as it will leak. Otherwise, wrap the springform tin in foil from the outside to prevent any leakage of the caramel sauce.
• Don’t let the cake cool down completely while in the tin or the caramel will stick to the sides and bottom making it impossible to remove the cake intact.
• Mix it up with other stone fruits, like my stone fruit cake recipe, it’s a fantastic way of enjoying different fruit flavours in one bite.
• Don’t worry if the cake looks dark on top with caramel sauce on the side of the tin. It’s a good sign to see the caramel sauce bubbling around the cake. This means the butter mixture has caramelised nicely while baking and absorbed into the cake, but mostly into the succulent apricots.
• This is a good make-ahead dessert that can be easily served warm by heating it up in the microwave directly on the serving plate.