Apricot-quark cake is a delicious summer treat of which you can easily make a full baking tray in under one hour!
Apricots have been a lottery in the Czech republic in the recent years. They are among the first fruit trees to blossom and as the beginnings of spring tend to be too warm now, especially in the warmer areas of the country, the apricot blossoms get burnt by the sub-zero temperatures which come later in spring. Therefore, if you have enough apricots on your tree, it’s a little like winning the lottery.
Now, if you do have apricots, there’s plenty of Czech apricot recipes you can try. Fruit dumplings are a classic with quark, grated walnuts, butter and sugar on top. Koláče are a perfect way to use ripe apricots, you can use my red-currant koláče recipe, just swap the fruit. And if you want to make it a little easier, make the apricot-quark cake which is basically the same thing, just all in one piece on a baking tray. Such cake is called táč in Czech.
I use very ripe apricots and the result is always very runny and we have to eat it with a teaspoon instead of grabbing pieces in the hand. But I find the combination of mushy apricots and melted streusel just so delicious!
To make this apricot cake, you will need apricots which are ideally very ripe, quark cheese (tvaroh in Czech) or other fresh cheese and then some basic ingredients used to make almost any cake.
There is a large variety of flours in the Czech republic, each has a specific purpose. I have written a Czech Flour Guide which you can turn to every time you need to know about any kind of flour used in Czech recipes. The type most commonly used for cakes is the semi-coarse wheat flour, however, if you don’t have any, just use any plain or all-purpose flour and you’ll be fine. Same goes for the streusel – coarse flour is best, go with any other if you don’t have coarse. Plain flour won’t give you such a nice streusel but it’s still worth it.
Apricot-quark cake – Recipe
Ingredients
(for a small tray)
Fruit
- aprox. 1 kg/2.2 lbs of ripe apricots
Dough
- 1 cup of semi-coarse flour
- pinch of salt
- 2 tbsp of unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup of milk
- 2 heaping tbsp of caster sugar
- 1 small or medium egg
- 1/2 tsp of dried yeast
- some extra grease and flour to coat the tray
Topping
- 1/2 cup of quark cheese or other fresh cheese
- 2 tbsp of caster sugar
- zest from 1 lemon
- 1 egg yolk
Streusel
- 2 tbsp of coarse flour
- 2 tbsp of butter, cold and diced
- 4 tbsp of caster sugar
How to make it
Cut the apricots in half and take out the kernels. Set them aside.
In a bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar and yeast. In another bowl whisk the egg, add butter and milk and gradually add the dry mixture. Combine well. Grease the baking tray, coat it with flour and spread the dough evenly on the bottom of the tray.
Combine quark cheese, sugar, lemon zest and egg yolk and spread this mixture on the dough. Place the apricot halves on the cheese topping. I find that it’s better if the inside faces up but it’s a choice.
In a small bowl, quickly combine flour, butter and sugar with your hand until the streusel is nicely crumbly but has no large lumps of butter. Sprinkle on the apricots. They should be generously covered so if you think you need more streusel, make more, much of it will melt.
Preheat the oven to 200°C/392°F and bake for 20 minutes.
Let the apricot-quark cake cool down, if you can wait that long, cut in rectangles and serve!
