I got a new cook book for Christmas…just what I need, another cook book! I am going to be adding this cook book to my “can’t live without” page. I just had to share this recipe with you from Giada’s Kitchen, New Italian Favorites.

I love coffee cake! It is great in the morning for breakfast, great as a brunch dish, heck I even like it at night with some ice cream! The coffee cake recipe that I usually use is with cherry pie filling, which is really good; but I think this recipe tops the list!

Giada says in her book that cakes like this, featuring nuts and dried fruits, are very popular in Venice. There they would eat it as an afternoon snack served with coffee; but I ate mine for breakfast! It beat the hum drum cereal!

ALMOND, PINE NUT AND APRICOT COFFEE CAKE:

1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup pine nuts (these tend to be expensive so I substituted walnuts)
1 1/4 tsp. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
4 – large eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup melted butter
1/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour (be sure to flour or your cake will stick) a 9 inch round cake pan.

Combine 1/4 cup of the almonds and 1/4 cup of the pine nuts(walnuts) in a dry skillet and place over med. high heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned and toasted, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a food processor and cool for a few minutes, then pulse until the nuts are finely ground. (If you don’t have a food processor, just place the nuts in a sealed ziploc bag and roll over with a rolling pin). Transfer the nuts to a medium bowl, add the flour, baking powder, and salt and stir to combine. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the eggs and the sugar until the mixture is thick and pale yellow. Add the butter and milk and combine, then stir in the almond extract and apricots by hand. Gently stir in the dry ingredients.

Pour batter into the prepared cake pan. Sprinkle the top of the cake with the remaining 1/4 cup of sliced almonds and 1/4 cup pine nuts (walnuts). Bake until the cake is cooked and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean – about 50 minutes. Let the cake cool on a wire rack. Use a knife to loosen the edges. Carefully turn the cake out, cut into wedges.

I also made a simple glaze of powdered sugar, milk and almond extract and drizzled over the top before cutting into wedges. This wasn’t apart of the original recipe; but I think it topped off the cake!

Enjoy!
Happy New Year!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2011 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Breads, Rolls & Buns, Breakfast, Muffins/Scones & Coffeecakes. Tags for this post: apricots, breakfast cake, coffee cake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.