This week’s Weekly Bake Off Challenge was Mary Berry’s Iced Apricot Fruit Loaf from her 100 Cakes and Bakes. I had received a lovely punnet of  organic apricots in my Riverford fruit box so decide to use these fresh ones rather than Mary’s suggested ready-to-eat dried apricots. The problem with that decision was that I wasn’t really sure that the glace cherries and sultanas she used would go with my fresh apricots. Somehow I managed to change the whole recipe before I really knew quite what I was doing but the result is a moist, fruity loaf which is actually quite delicious. I’ve decided not to enter my cake into the Weekly Bake Off this week as it’s not really at all like Mary’s recipe but seemingly her original recipe is delicious too so I must give it a go too sometime

Here is a lovely blog post from Rising to the Berry describing making Mary’s cake correctly  http://risingtotheberry.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/iced-apricot-fruit-loaf.html

For all the lovely Iced Apricot Fruit Loaf entries in the Weekly Bake Off Challenge  http://weeklybakeoff.blogspot.com

Apricot and Marmalade Loaf

Preheat the oven to 160c and prepare a 2lb loaf tin.

Ingredients:-

3 large eggs, beaten

175g self raising flour

2 teaspoons ginger

75 softened butter

75g light muscovado sugar

150g apricots, peeled and chopped

4 tablespoons marmalade

Beat all the ingredients together until smooth but only for a minute or two. Bake for about an hour or until the cake is golden brown, firm to touch and shrinking away from the sides of the tin.

NB – Mary Berry’s recipe calls for her loaf to be iced with sifted icing sugar mixed with apricot jam and a little water then decorated with chopped apricots on the top and although I didn’t ice mine I’m sure this would be delicious