APRICOT SANDWICH CAKE

When you find yourself sliding more or less gracefully along a path consisting of new flats, new working-week catastrophes, new friends and new definitely-not-friends, new routes home through the park (or around it, when it’s dark), new and annoyingly smaller Clippers, new (?) bastions of human progress that go under the name of gift cards, new accents, new motion graphics teachers at the University of Life (please, if that’s ok), new pens and candle holders, and new perspectives on what is real and what is not; when all this happens, you have to stop for a minute and take time to celebrate an old ally. Who, in fact, today gets even older (but we don’t mind because we like him greatly). With a double-decker apricot cake all frosted up and covered in dinosaur sprinkles and popping candy, because that's how we roll. Haaappaay Birthday Adam.

APRICOT SANDWICH CAKE

5 tablespoons ground flaxseed

6 tablespoons water

250g (2 cups) plain flour

225g (1 cup) sugar

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

80ml (1/3 cup) sunflower oil or other flavourless oil

60g (1/4 cup) soya yoghurt or other non-dairy yoghurt

110g (4oz) drained tinned apricots, chopped
60ml (1/4 cup) apricot syrup

Icing:

60g (1/4 cup) margarine

60g (1/4  cup) vegetable fat

280g (1 ¾ cup) icing sugar

1 tablespoon soya milk or other non-dairy milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 175°C (340°F) and lightly grease your cake tin(s). In a bowl mix together ground flaxseed and water until well combined and gloopy. In a separate bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add oil, yoghurt, apricot syrup and chopped apricot to the flaxseed mixture, then pour into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared tins, then bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Leave on a rack to cool whilst you prepare the icing.

Cream together margarine and vegetable fat until fluffy. Add icing sugar and beat until combined. Lastly add milk and vanilla extract and beat until light and fluffy.

When the cakes have completely cooled, spread the icing on the top of one cake, sandwich the second one on top, then spread more icing on the top and sides. Decorate with really cool dinosaur sprinkles.

Notes: This recipe makes three 10 cm/4” mini cakes (two of which I sandwiched, plus one for taste testing...HA), but you can use the same exact recipe (for the cake, but also icing) to make one 20cm/8" cake. In this case, increase the cooking time to 35-40 minutes.