For a girl allergic to chocolate

This past Shabbat my room mate and I decided to stay in, for the third week in a row. Her reasoning was "I'm in the middle of finals and I dont have to the energy to travel for Shabbat." My reasoning was "I'm too lazy to go anywhere so I'll just stay home." And so we found ourselves together again for a very romantic evening of schnitzel, carrot kugel, anagrams and rummikub. She had invited a few friends over for lunch, of whom one happened to be allergic to chocolate. Allergic to chocolate?!?!?!?! How does she ever find fulfillment in life? Doesn't she feel like something is missing?

I have a friend who gripes about the obsession with chocolate desserts. "There are so many options other than chocolate, yet people always want something with chocolate!" she cries. And it's true, if you look at her blog you will find very little chocolate desserts but a multitude of fruity confections. So after getting over the initial shock of a life without chocolate, I mosied on over to her blog, For the Love of Bread, to search for a suitable dessert. After some browsing I found an Apricot Nectarine Buckle, perfect to use up all of my slightly overripe apricots hanging out in the fridge.

I found that the batter wasnt enough so I made another half-batch.

Don't the pieces of fruit look just like gems?

I may have pushed the fruit down a little to hard as well, but I liked the surprise of finding a chunk of apricot in the cake, rather than on top.

Apricot Nectarine Buckle

adapted from Williams-Sonoma (and taken from For the Love of Bread) 

3-4 apricots

3-4 nectarines

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 sticks margarine or butter, softened

1 cup sugar plus more for sprinkling

2 eggs

Preheat your oven to 180C. Grease a 9 inch springform pan and set aside.

Slice the fruit. The recipe calls for slicing the nectarines into fourths and the apricots into thirds, but I didn't do well in math so I just sliced 'em up willy nilly.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

In a separate bowl beat the margarine and sugar together until uniform and creamy.

Add the vanilla and eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add the flour mixture all at once and mix to form a thick batter.

Spread batter into the prepared pan and then top with the fruit, gently pressing them down into the batter (or harder if you want fruity surprises like me!) Sprinkle some sugar on top and bake until golden, about 45 minutes. Don't forget to rotate, especially if you have a weird European oven like me, which tends to be MUCH hotter in the back.

Enjoy!