Apricot Upside Down Cake

I cheated and used tinned apricots and it still tasted good. 

Apricot upside down cake

MasterChef's John Torode uses sweet, golden apricots to create this cake - delicious served warm as a pudding

Recipe uploaded by

John Torode

Serves 8

Preparation and cooking times

Prep 20 mins
Cook 1 hr
plus cooling

1. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Line the base of a 23cm springform cake tin with baking parchment.
2. To poach the apricots, heat the sugar, 300ml water and vanilla seeds and pod in a wide shallow pan with a lid until the sugar dissolves. Halve the apricots, remove the stones and put in the pan. Bring to a simmer, put a lid on and turn off the heat.
3. Sieve the flour and baking powder together three times to aerate. Beat the butter and the sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour. If the batter is too thick, add the milk (it should drop off a spoon easily).
4. Take the apricots from the syrup, pat dry and put in the bottom of the tin, cut-side down. Spoon the batter over and level. Bake for 40-50 minutes until risen and springy. Remove from the oven and cool a little. Meanwhile, reduce the poaching liquid to a syrup. Turn the cake out gently onto a plate, and spoon over some of the syrup and serve with ice cream or greek yogurt and a sprinkling of pistachios, if you like.

PER SERVING

499 kcalories, protein 7.3g, carbohydrate 66.8g, fat 24.4 g, saturated fat 14g, fibre 2.4g, salt 0.8 g

Ingredients

• 200g plain flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 200g butter , softened
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tbsp milk
• Greek yogurt or ice cream, to serve
• chopped pistachios , to serve (optional)

FOR THE APRICOTS

• 100g golden caster sugar
• 1 vanilla pod , split and seeds scraped or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 12 ripe apricots