A Simple Summer Nectarine Cake with Saffron

I took a short summer break from baking and spent the past few weekends at my mum's. Most of the time, I just relaxed in her beautiful garden. My brother now lives only three houses away and we spent the evenings barbecuing either at mum's or at my brother's. Wolfgang kept complaining about the lack of cake, though. Well, at certain temperatures, even I don't want to get near the oven anymore. But, now that those mild late summer days are about to come, it's time to make use of all the wonderful fruit this season brings along. This is a recipe from one of my new baking books and since I like to experiment with spices, I've adapted it slightly and added some saffron. The sweet and slightly sour nectarines go very well with a hint of saffron which gives the cake a fuller, warm flavor.

Recipe
(slightly adapted from "Love, Bake, Nourish" by Amber Rose)

175g butter, softened
150g plain flour or white spelt flour
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
170g dark honey
3 tablespoons milk
100g ground almonds
1 sachet of saffron
400g very ripe nectarines, stoned and cut into 2cm pieces
icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 160°C and grease and flour a 24cm diameter springform pan.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter with an electric hand mixer until pale and fluffy. Add 2-3 tablespoons flour and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Continue to beat until you have a light, fluffy mixture (if it looks as if it's curdling, add another tablespoon of flour). Fold in the rest of the flour, the baking powder, the saffron, honey, milk and ground almonds and mix well. Gently fold in the nectarine pieces.

Scrape the batter into the cake tin, level the top with the back of a spoon or a palette knife and bake in the oven for about 1 - 1 1/4 hour or until the center springs back to the touch. Make sure the top of your cake does not burn. Cover with aluminium foil if necessary.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for at least 10 minutes before carefully turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Dust with icing sugar before serving.