Chocolate Apricot Upside-Down Cake and Warm Fuzzies

Chocolate Apricot Upside-Down Cake

Sometimes You Push Through

I really toiled over which cake to make this week. I’ve conquered over half of the fifty-two recipes…over half! Possibly, I’m getting a little burnt out producing a cake every week and trying to blurb something profound. But let’s get real…I can find something to say about almost anything. And is cake really ever an inconvenience?

Nevertheless, this week’s cake venture was challenging. Maybe it’s merely because the options are getting slimmer. Don’t worry, there are some really good ones left, but I’ve already designated several for specific occasions.

Well, this week basically came down to me obsessing over last week’s upside-down cake, and I wanted to get me more of that. But this week, the fruit of choice was apricot, and the cake was chocolate. Does that sound weird to you? Because it sounded weird to me. But here I am rolling with it.

More Chocolate, Please

This recipe had a few different elements. For example, it started with a caramel sauce, much like last week’s, except this was a basic butter-and-brown-sugar syrup.

Praise the great fruit goddesses, I didn’t have to peel the apricots! That was the most tedious part of last week’s cake with peaches (still worth it). This just required washing and quartering. Piece of cake (pun intended).

The chocolate cake had two different types of chocolate—melted bittersweet chocolate and Dutch cocoa powder—the more chocolate, the better, as a chocoholic would say. Once again, I substituted soured heavy cream for the buttermilk for added richness. The batter reminded me of brownie batter.

The Surprise Spice

I’ve heard people swear by adding cinnamon to chocolate for a special boost. This recipe called for cardamom, which I didn’t have on hand and couldn’t find in the grocery store.

Although I try to make these cakes by the book, I substituted allspice instead. I’m not sure I made the right choice. It was still good, but I wonder if cinnamon would have been the better option. In any case, I wish I’d had the cardamom to see what it was really supposed to taste like. 

Sweet Perfection

The final result of this journey into fruit and chocolate was a dark, mysterious cake with ooey-gooey, caramely topping and a fancy spiral of apricot wedges. I was pleased with the appearance, which gave the impression that I put some thought into it. I really didn’t…there was just no other reasonable pattern in which to arrange the apricots.

The cake was rich and dense, standing up nicely to each forkful. The syrup and juice from the apricots made it almost reminiscent of a tres leches cake, dripping with flavor. The apricots themselves were perfectly softened, like a sauce on their own.

As for the combination of apricots and chocolate, it kind of…worked. The apricots almost melted into the cake, so it really was more of an infusion than a separate layer.

Warm Fuzzies: The Transcend Moment

Author of Vintage Cakes, Julie Richardson, says, “Fresh apricots are a brief summer delight.” Boy, she wasn’t kidding. My personal shopper (a.k.a. my husband, a teacher on summer break) undertook a city-wide apricot search. I don’t even know how many stores he tried. I didn’t want to ask because I felt bad. But I appreciate his persistence so much that I relinquished the last slice of cake to him.

Does anyone else find apricots special? Growing up on the farm, we didn’t often have fresh fruit unless we grew it; therefore, fresh apricots were a no-go. As a side note, last week, at my mom’s house, there were fresh apricots on the counter. I washed and cut one for her, and it made me feel special providing for her as she so often did when I was young. She deserves her fresh apricots.

Apricots actually remind me of my grandma. We lived a very simple life when I was a kid. My grandma must have found apricots special, as well, because she would gift us cans of apricots for special occasions, like birthdays. They were always a welcome treat. I loved receiving my very own apricots.

Fast forward to this week when my darling other half plowed through store after store in search of these fuzzy little delights. The funny thing is that he wasn’t looking forward to this week’s cake because apricots are “furry and stringy,” in his words. Guess what? He really seemed to enjoy the result.

Isn’t it funny that something as simple as a fruit can bring back special memories and hold so much nostalgia? My childhood treat became a moment of pampering and care from my husband and a well-deserved snack for my mom. Both of these instances made my heart feel fuzzy right alongside the apricots.

It really is the simple things you carry through life that can turn ordinary moments into extraordinary ones.