Apricot Ginger Yogurt Cake

There's an obvious dilemma (dilemna?) when baking during hotter than usual weather at this time of year. The abundance of wonderful fresh fruit cries out to be used, but we know things won't keep well unless refrigerated, which often spoils the texture of cakes and pastries, even if they are brought back to room temperature before serving.

I decided to take my chances with this fresh apricot cake, to my cost. It was baked on Thursday afternoon, but was mouldy by Saturday evening - I had hoped it would last long enough, without refrigeration, to be finished as Saturday's dessert, but the last three portions had to be thrown away.

The recipe I used was the delightfully versatile Stone Fruit Yogurt Cake from Dan Lepard. I used about 450g fresh apricots - 175g chopped into the cake batter and the rest arranged carefully in the base of the cake tin before putting in the cake batter. I also reduced the lemon zest to that from one lemon and added 50g of chopped glacé ginger and a teaspoon of ground ginger to the cake batter to add a little zing, as fresh apricots are often a bit of a gamble in the flavour stakes. As it turned out these apricots were wonderfully tart with a good depth of flavour when cooked, but the ginger still added an extra dimension to the overall balance of the cake.

The texture of this cake is quite dense and moist, thanks to the semolina in the batter, which makes it a great dessert as well as a tasty cake. It would be good as a picnic dessert if left in the tin until ready to eat.

This month's Tea Time Treats challenge, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage, is to use fresh fruit when creating something suitable for the tea-table, so I am submitting this cake. Karen shares hosting duties for this Tea Time Treats (full rules here) with Kate at What Kate Baked. This month Karen is using a linky for submission of entries but will still write a round-up post at the end of the month.