Stone Fruit Tea Cake

No no… this cake is not hard like stone. Stone fruits are fruits that contain one hard seed in the middle and peaches, cherries, nectarines, plum, apricots are stone fruits. Mangoes and avocadoes, although seem to have only one seed in the middle are not stone fruits.

I had some blueberries from my MIL’s Japanese cotton cheesecake, and I don’t want to make muffins, nor pancakes. I am not thinking of crumbles because I do not have enough of it and buying another punnet is expensive, very expensive. Yeah, I’m a miser. RM15 for 1 cup of blueberries. I can have 3 lunches with RM15.

So I searched and searched online.. and this  looked interesting. Puddles of batter strewn over the cake, with fruits peeking from underneath. Unlike a crumble, unlike a cobbler, unlike a fruit pastry cake.. this looks interesting.

You can use any stone fruit that you like, but make sure that it’s not too ripe. One site I read, said she used peaches that were too ripe, and it caused the cake base to be damp. So, I guess canned peaches are out of the league, since those are ultra moist and wet. And another site also said no to strawberries as they are too juicy. I didn’t see any fresh peaches or apricots when I went shopping yesterday, so I reconstituted some dried apricots with orange juice. Changed the vanilla to orange zest.

The cake looked lovely when baked, and true enough, the plums added a pink purplish tone to the cake, the skin bled and make it look real nice. The reconstituted apricots were really sweet, literally. I think if fresh ones were used, the whole cake won’t be so sweet. Overall, I love this cake, and I’ll make this again when I see fresh peaches or apricots around, and I won’t be flavouring the dough with orange, but with vanilla, just like the original recipe states. I used orange this time because I reconstituted the apricots with orange juice, if you want to use vanilla, please just use water to reconstitute the dried apricots. I don’t mean that orange isn’t nice here, it’s nice, but I’d want to try the original version the next time.

Stone Fruits Tea Cake Recipe
1 Tbsp butter (for greasing pan)
150gm all purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
100gm sugar (can be reduced to 80gm, I used dried apricots as filling and I found it the whole cake a bit sweeter than I’d prefer it)
80gm butter
1 + ½ egg
1 Tbsp orange zest
1 Tbsp brown sugar
75gm dried apricots (about 12) soaked overnight in 75ml orange juice
1 black plum, diced
70gm blueberries

1. Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. With a mixer, cream the sugar and butter together on medium-high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition, then stir in the orange zest..
2. Add the flour in 2 or three shifts, mixing just until a smooth dough forms. It will be pretty soft still. Dollop it out onto two pieces of plastic wrap, making one mound of dough slightly larger than the other. Wrap the dough blobs in the plastic and form them into flat discs. Place on a baking sheet and stick them in the freezer for 30 minutes. While waiting, prepare and cut your fruits.
3. Preheat the oven to 160/180C. Butter a shallow, 8-inch baking dish or tart pan Take the slightly bigger parcel of dough and press it down onto the bottom of the pan. Scatter the fruit over the dough. Break the second disc of dough into tsp size balls and scatter them over the fruit. It will look charming no matter how even the blobs are, so don't worry too much about getting them perfect.
4. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes (I baked for 35), or until lightly golden and firm. Cool for 30 minutes before serving.

Wrapped in plastic wrap, this tea cake will keep at room temperature for up to 3 days. You can also freeze the unbaked dough; if wrapped well, it will keep for up to 3 months. You can freeze a whole, unbaked cake with fruit, wrapped well for 1 month.

Adapted from these two sites:
http://tastespace.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/stone-fruit-tea-cake-peach-tea-cake/
http://wildeyedbibliophile.blogspot.com/2009/08/apricot-blueberry-tea-cake.html
And here’s a gluten free version: http://makingromaroma.com/2009/09/10/rustic-tea-cake-gluten-free/