This is absolutely one of my favourite cakes, and my sister said it’s the best cake she’s ever eaten. That’s a big call, but once you’ve tasted it, I think you’ll find it’ll be up there at the top of your list too.
Firstly, I would like to acknowledge that I have adapted this recipe…
from one that I cut out and saved many, many years ago. I didn’t save the name of the magazine but I suspect it was one of my much-anticipated subscription treats each month. I couldn’t wait to see what was trending, new restaurants opening, wonderful new recipes with hard-to-find new ingredients…. How times have changed. These days ingredients that were once hard to track down can be readily found in supermarket aisles, and a recipe for almost anything can be found online. But the joys of thumbing through a real, paper magazine cannot be underestimated and being able cut out inspiring recipes or bookmark the pages and refer back to them without firing up the laptop is something I truly love.
The original, treasured recipe is so old…
that when I first baked this cake (in its original format) shredded coconut was hard to find, and when I did find it, I decided it was a little out of my budget and I opted for desiccated coconut instead. BIG mistake! The texture of the shredded coconut is a definite must for this cake. I also remember fondly those days when one could buy Australian grown and dried apricots. Sigh! Yes, they were more costly than the imported version, and perhaps not as moist as those of Turkish origin, but I loved their slight chewiness and that particular tang that the Australian apricots provided. Recently I scoured the supermarkets and any other shop I could think of that might supply dried fruit, and couldn’t find a single one that supplied Australian-produced dried apricots. My heart sank. Yes, we have Australian-owned, dried fruit companies, and thank goodness for that! But no Australian apricots. Now, I would love it if somebody wrote to me to tell me that I’m wrong, because perhaps I wasn’t looking in enough of the right places, and it would truly make my heart sing to be able to buy Australian, because I do so whenever I possibly can. So if you’re out there and know where I can find such apricots, don’t keep that secret to yourself! Let me in on it!
I love to plug my local Food Co-op whenever I can…
so I won’t forgo this opportunity to tell you that whilst The Blue Mountains Food Co-op, too, stock Turkish apricots, they do stock the organic, sulphite-free variety, which is the very best I can find. Not only do they stock these superior apricots, they do also stock organic Australian grown and dried plums. Ok, I know a plum is not an apricot, but “Hooray!!” nonetheless. I guess one would normally call dried plums “prunes” but these are more like the delicious Australian dried apricots of the past – cut in half and pitted, chewy (but not leathery!), tangy and simply irresistible.
Ok, enough talk of dried fruit. I’ll cut to the chase and provide you with the recipe for Apricot, Chocolate and Coconut Sangria Cake, but before I do, and before you look at the picture and wonder whether the cake just looks small or whether it actually is…another disclaimer: I baked the cake in its specified size, fully intending to take photos for this blog. Sadly (well, sadly for you because you don’t get a picture of that particular cake, but not sadly for me or my friend for whose birthday I baked it), we quickly demolished said cake without even sparing a thought of immortalising it on camera. In a blink, it was gone (there were a couple of other partakers too, I might add. Tony and I did not eat half a cake each!). So in order to supply a picture for this blog, I baked a half-sized cake with leftover ingredients and it worked just fine. So you could bake a mini version too, if so inclined, though you may want to bake it for a little more than half the specified duration, in order to avoid under-cooking the middle. Whatever the case, I hope you enjoy this moist, delicious cake in good company or even just have it all to yourself.
Apricot, Chocolate and Coconut Sangria Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup chopped dried apricots
- 1 cup Glüh-Brew Sangria Syrup
- 125g butter at room temperature
- ½ cup raw sugar
- 2 eggs, separated
- 1 ½ cups shredded coconut
- 1 ½ cups self-raising flour
- ½ cup chocolate bits
Optional to serve:
- Icing sugar
- Thick cream
Method:
Combine the apricots and Sangria Syrup in a bowl and set aside for one hour. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin with baking paper. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and creamy and beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Stir in the coconut, half the sifted flour and half the apricot mixture, then mix in the remaining flour and apricots and lastly the choc bits. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form and fold into the mixture. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1 ¼ hours. Allow to stand for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cake cooler. To serve, dust with icing sugar and thick cream if desired. Enjoy!
