If you’re expecting overnight guests during the holiday season, you might want to stock up on the ingredients for this recipe. Doing so will allow you to throw together a knockout coffee cake for breakfast, a special treat that features a cream biscuit dough packed with intensely flavored dried apricots, layered with almond paste and glazed with apricot jam.
The right ingredients are crucial. You want California apricots because they’re much more tart and apricot-y than the Turkish variety. As for the jam, the first ingredient listed on the label should be apricots, not sugar, because this cake is all about the balance between the sweet almond paste and the tart apricots and jam. Likewise, be sure you’re using almond paste and not marzipan. The latter is too sugary.
The dough is also key, so take care to measure it correctly. The best way is with a scale not a measuring cup. One cup of flour should weigh 4 1/4 ounces, but if you pack it tightly into a measuring cup, it’ll weigh much more … and your cake will turn out tough and dry. If you don’t own a scale, fluff up your flour, sprinkle it loosely into a one-cup dry-cup measure and scrape off the excess with a straight edge.
Finally, when adding the heavy cream to the flour mixture, take care not to overmix the dough. The longer you work it, the more the gluten develops and the chewier the dough becomes. Not good. It takes a careful baker to make a tender coffee cake.
APRICOT ALMOND COFFEE CAKE
Start to finish: 1 hour 10 minutes (40 active)
Servings: 12
8 1/2 ounces (about 2 cups) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon table salt
3/4 cup (about 3 1/2 ounces) finely chopped apricots, preferably California apricots
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
6 tablespoons apricot jam
3 ounces very thinly sliced almond paste
Nutrition information per serving: 229 calories; 100 calories from fat; 11 g fat (6 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 34 mg cholesterol; 200 mg sodium; 29 g carbohydrate; 1 g fiber; 11 g sugar; 3 g protein.
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