Apricot- vanilla Cake

Its been a while since I baked a cake and I terribly miss it. We have been gorging on fresh fruit as dessert since summer started and suddenly two days back, I realized I hadn't baked in a while and was craving some nice upside down cake. Had some canned apricots and strangely all the ingredients for a plain vanilla cake. Ro was playing badminton that night and I knew he'd be late, so I decided to go ahead and bake instead of making dinner (which was leftover mince meat and chapathi). 

I am such a sucker for vanilla or rather plain cakes, that I was floored with the first bite I took. The apricots added that grandeur to an otherwise plain cake and half way through I decided I didn't want to do an upside down cake, but just incorporate the apricots into the cake. Keep it for one more day, and I'd say it tasted even better.

Recipe halved from here

Plain flour- 1 cup + 1 tbsp

Self raising flour- 1 1/4 cups 

Baking powder- 1 1/4 tsp

Salt- 1/4 tsp

Sugar- 1 cup

Butter- 1/2 cup

Eggs- 2

Vanilla extract- 2 tsp

Evaporated milk- 1/2 cup

Canned apricots- 400 gms

Sift together all the dry ingredients- both the flour, baking powder and salt. Keep aside.

In a mixer with paddle attachment or with a hand beater, cream together till fluffy the sugar and butter.

Add the eggs one after the other, beating well after each addition.

Pour in the vanilla extract and then fold in dry ingredients, alternating with the evaporated milk making sure you start and end with the dry ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 160C, butter and line a 9" square spring form pan with baking paper.

Pour the cake batter into the pan and line the apricot halves hollow side down in whichever way you fancy.

Bake for about 40 to 50 minutes or till the skewer test comes out positive.

Let it stay in the pan for about 5 minutes, before turning it out onto a cooling rack.

Dab some cream or ice cream and serve with a smile.

Notes: I halved the recipe, you can double it and make a layer cake, adding the apricots sliced and mixed with the cream frosting.
You can skip the salt and baking powder if using self raising flour. The original recipe calls for cake flour.

The cake was super duper soft and yumm is all i can say.