Spiced Plum Streusel Cake with Toffee Glaze

A taste test slice...it would be lovely with cream or good yoghurt

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For Xmas my Aunt who lives in London, gave the boys and I Amazon vouchers. Because the NZ dollar is so strong against the pound, I was able to get 4 books of which this David Lebovitz book was one. I love this guy! His recipes are lovely, attainable and so far seem to work out well. I also have his ice cream book which hasn't had too much of a work out this summer but I'm hoping to break this pattern very soon! I'm actually working on a long day tomorrow as an overtime shift so thought it would be nice to take some home baked treats into work. Therefore this really should be a 'Baking For....' post but I will do that for the other thing I made to take in with me as it really was too many words for the header. 


I was tossing up between the Banana Cake with Mocha Frosting and Candied Peanuts and this but in the end this won out as I love streusel cakes and I love apricots. The recipe actually uses plums but he also suggests using apricots too which it what I went for as I had some that needed to be used up. It was a very easy cake to make and I don't think you could go all that wrong with it if you follow the recipe. I hope the girls like it tomorrow but if not I also have another treat I made just in case. Of course I have had to taste test it and it is a lovely light cake with the slightly tart apricots and nicely spiced streusel topping. Excuse the presentation 'plate' but it is in it's container ready to be transported to work. Give it a go...


Spiced Apricot Streusel Cake with Toffee Glaze


Streusel
80 gm sliced almonds
2 Tbsp flour
70 gm brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon and grd cardamom
1 1/2 Tbsp butter melted


Combine all ingredients and mix well. Set aside.


Cake
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp baking powder and baking soda
1 1/2 tsp grd cardamom
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt (I use salted butter so I didn't add this)
115 gm butter
3/4 c sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c buttermilk (I used plain yoghurt as for once I had no buttermilk)
5340 gm or 5 medium plums (I used apricots), halved, pitted and cut into eighths


Preheat oven to 175 C. Butter and line the base of a 23 cm springform tin.


Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix well.


In a separate bowl sieve the flour, soda, baking powder and spices. Add 1/2 of this to the butter mixture followed by the yoghurt then the rest of the flour mixing only until incorporated after each addition.


Put into the tin and top with the apricots of plums pushing down gently. Sprinkle over the streusel topping. 


Bake about 55 mins until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin completely then spoon over the glaze allowing some to drip down the sides.


Glaze
2 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp brown sugar
3 Tbsp cream
1/4 tsp vanilla


Melt the ingredients together except the vanilla and bring to the boil. Simmer about a minute then take off the heat to cool. Once it is completely cool add the vanilla.