The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Apricot almond coffee cake is a special treat
If you’re expecting overnight guests during the holiday season, you might want to stock up on the ingredients for this recipe. Doing so will allow you to throw together a knockout coffee cake for breakfast, a special treat that features a cream biscuit dough packed with intensely flavored dried apricots, layered with almond paste and glazed with apricot jam.
The right ingredients are crucial. You want California apricots because they’re much more tart and apricot-y than the Turkish variety.
As for the jam, the first ingredient listed on the label should be apricots, not sugar, because this cake is all about the balance between the sweet almond paste and the tart apricots and jam. Likewise, be sure you’re using almond paste and not marzipan. The latter is too sugary.
The dough is also key, so take care to measure it correctly. The best way is with a scale not a measuring cup. One cup of flour should weigh 4 ¼ ounces, but if you pack it tightly into a measuring cup, it’ll weigh much more ... and your cake will turn out tough and dry. If you don’t own a scale, fluff up your flour, sprinkle it loosely into a one-cup drycup measure and scrape off the excess with a straight edge.
Finally, when adding the heavy cream to the flour mixture, take care not to overmix the dough. The longer you work it, the more the gluten develops and the chewier the dough becomes. Not good. It takes a careful baker to make a tender coffee cake.
Sara Moulton is host of public television’s “Sara’s Weeknight Meals.” She was executive chef at Gourmet magazine for nearly 25 years and spent a decade hosting several Food Network shows, including “Cooking Live.” Her latest cookbook is “HomeCooking 101.”