Goat's Cheese, Apricot and Walnut Savoury Cake

Now that sugar has been recognised as a bigger threat to health than saturated fats, I'm wondering what implications this will have on the recent surge in home baking. Will we all switch to savoury baking? Make bread, quiches and meat pasties instead of sugar-heavy brownies and cookies? I doubt that sweet baking will be abandoned entirely though - at least with home baking, as with all types of cooking, it's easier to control the amount of sugar that you add. Perhaps the way forward is to re-run our favourite recipes and see how much the sugar can be reduced without spoiling the finished product.

Something I like once in a while are savoury cakes, although they will never replace sweet cakes entirely. There are times when a slice of savoury cake goes down well - early evening, with a glass of wine or with a lunchtime salad, but what you need with your mid-morning cup of tea or evening coffee is normal sweet cake.

I chose this versatile recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (second recipe down), and following his suggestions, changed the raisins and hazelnuts for dried apricots and walnuts, as that was what I had in stock. I also used parmesan instead of hard goat's cheese.

This was a pleasant savoury cake, but I think I would have preferred it to be totally savoury. The dried fruit in this recipe was sweet enough to overwhelm the savoury elements, even the parmesan cheese, resulting in something which didn't fall satisfactorily into either the sweet or savoury camp. In this respect, the other two recipes on the link look more interesting - the ham and olive one in particular, although another recent TV programme has warned of the dangers of processed meats!