This cake was the result of a little late night experimental baking. In all honesty I hadn’t intended to post the recipe on my blog, but the picture was pretty popular on my Instagram and Facebook pages plus I had a few requests for the recipe from colleagues.
This was my first attempt at a gluten and dairy free cake so I was pretty relieved that it was so well received. Phew!

I have been looking for any excuse to use the delicious ginger syrup I recently received in the post from the very generous and lovely ginger people. I added two tablespoons of the syrup to replace the milk – it turned out lovely, the ginger gave the cake a very gentle warmth without overpowering the other flavours.

I absolutely love this ginger syrup – I’ve poured it over my porridge, ice cream and using it to make gingerbread lattes! You can find out more about The ginger people and their lovely products on their website.

Gluten free apricot and raspberry almond cake

175ml light olive oil
175g caster sugar
4 or 5 ripe apricots
2 eggs
175g gluten free plain flour
1tsp gluten free baking powder
100g ground almonds
2 tbsp ginger syrup (if you don’t have the aforementioned ginger party brand, any other kind of ginger syrup would be fine)
150g raspberries

Preheat the oven to 180c. Grease and line the bottom of a 20cm cake tin.

Lightly beat the olive oil, sugar and ginger syrup together, add the eggs and beat until the mixture is well blended.

Sift in the flour, ground almonds and baking powder and lightly fold into the oil and egg mixture until the batter is smooth. Finally, fold in 100g raspberries.

Pour this batter into the lined cake tin.

Cut the apricots in half and remove the stones.  Arrange the halved apricots, skin side down, on the top of the cake. Place the remaining raspberries on top. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. If the cake is getting a little dark on top, cover with a piece of baking paper.

This cake is beautiful served warm as a pudding with extra ginger syrup and cream – although bear in mind that it is quite delicate until it’s completely cooled.