Apricot Almond Cake With Rosewater Cardamom

This is my idea of a perfect cake: simple, beautiful, fragrant and beguiling. I’ve been making this sort of cake, in one form or another, since my clementine cake in how to eat, and i can’t help but feel, with a certain calm excitement, that it has reached its apogee here. One of the things that makes this so easy, is that you can throw all the ingredients into a food processor. But if you don’t have one, simply chop the prepared dried apricots and cardamom seeds very finely and then beat together with the remaining cake ingredients. (recipe courtesy simply nigella)

Steps

Equipment: 1 x 20cm / 8-inch round springform cake tin.

Put the dried apricots into a small saucepan , cover them with the cold water , and drop in the cracked cardamom pods with their fragrant seeds.

Put on the heat , then bring to the boil and let it bubble for 10 minutes dont stray too far away from the pan , as by the end of the 10 minutes the pan will be just about out of water and you want to make sure it doesnt actually run dry as the apricots will absorb more water as they cool.

Take the pan off the heat , place on a cold , heatproof surface and let the apricots cool.

Preheat the oven to 180c / gas mark 4 / 350f.

Grease the sides of your springform cake tin and line the bottom with baking parchment.

Remove 5 of the dried apricots and tear each in half , then set aside for the time being.

Discard the cardamom husks , leaving the seeds in the pan.

Pour and scrape out the sticky contents of the pan into the bowl of a food processor.

Add the almond meal , polenta , bakin.

Ingredients

dried apricots, cold water, cardamom pods, ground almonds, polenta, baking powder, caster sugar, eggs, lemon juice, rose water, nonstick cooking spray, rose petals, pistachios