Apricot Tray Bake with Almond Streusel

When I said last week that I would love to have lunch with my team members from the office on my birthday, they said that they would invite me to lunch, but that they would never dare to offer me to bring cake. Never mind, I said, I'm going to take care of that myself ;-) Apricots are probably my favourite fruit, so I went for this cake I had bookmarked ages ago in a good old Betty Bossi book. Enough for a large crowd.

I had a really great day today! Thank you for all your birthday wishes and the cute presents! Lots of love to all of you!

Recipe:
(from Betty Bossi - Festliche Menüs)

For the dough:
150g butter, soft
250g sugar
1 sachet of vanilla sugar
2 lemons, grated zest
1 pinch of salt
4 eggs
200g sour cream
300g plain flour
1 sachet of baking powder
100g ground almonds
about 1 kg apricots

For the streusel:
50g butter, soft
50g sugar
1/2 sachet vanilla sugar
50g ground almonds
50g plain flour

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line a 33x30 baking tray with parchment paper.

First, prepare the streusel. Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla sugar in a bowl with an electric hand mixer. Then, add flour and ground almonds and rub with your fingers until you have a crumbly batter. Put in the refridgerator.

Then, preprare the apricots. Wash and stone them and slice them into quarters. Set aside.

For the dough, beat butter, sugar, vanilla sugar, lemon zest and salt in a large bowl with an electric mixer until you have a soft batter. Add the eggs, one by one and mix well. Add the sour cream and mix. Then, in another bowl, mix flour, baking powder and ground almonds and add to your batter. Mix well.

Fill your batter into the prepared baking tray and smoothen down with a ladle. Arrange your apricots on the dough relatively close together. Scatter the streusel on your cake and bake it on the lower half of your oven for about 45 minutes. With my cake, it only took about 35 minutes.

Once it's cooled down, dust with icing sugar, cut into slices and serve.

Half of the above ingredients are enough for a 24-26cm diameter springform pan. Instead of the streusel, you could also use slivered almonds. The cake can be prepared a day in advance. It will still be moist after a day or two.