Last weekend was quite busy. Besides going to the Holi festival on Saturday, I explored Austrians countryside on Sunday. It was a very culanary day. It was actually less exploring the beautiful ruins, hills and castles but more the fresh apricots, cherries and fresh produce.

But my one-day-holiday is not what I wanted to tell you. Well it was until I forgot my DSRL camera and couldn’t take any pictures. So this post is about the apricots that I bought and used in a sheet cake. You didn’t think that I forgot about you, did you?!

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I did some heavy research online for the best apricot cake that I could find and as always I combined a few recipes to make this apricot cream cheese sheet cake. My boyfriend said it’s one of the best cakes he’s ever eaten. That’s a real compliment in his books.

All you need for this cake is:

– 2 eggs
– 100 g butter (room temperature)
– 200 g castor sugar
– 1 Tbsp Vanille sugar
– 1 pinch of salt
– 250 g cream cheese (for Austrian and German readers: you can use Topfen or Quark)
– 300 g flour
– 1 Tbsp baking powder
– 300 ml milk
– about 10 – 15 apricots

Preheat the oven to 180° C. Combine the flour with the baking powder. Separate the eggs and beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and 50 g of sugar until stiff. Beat the butter until really soft and add the egg yolks, the rest of the sugar and Vanille sugar. Once it’s well combined add the cream cheese. Put the egg whites and cream cheese mixture together into a bowl and slowly sieve in the flour and add the milk. Carefully combine everything.

Spread it onto a baking sheet. (I used a square baking tin for part of the mixture and put the rest on a baking sheet, you can use a wide baking tin as well if you want.)
Quarter the apricots and take the stone out and spread on the dough. Push them down a little (they should hold anyway and sink in a little, this is just to make sure that they do so for sure.) Put the cake into the preheated oven and bake for 40 – 45 mins.

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Now. Look what a beautiful apricot and cream cheese cake I made!

The cream cheese makes it extra moist and delicious.

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One thing that I want to tell you though is that I had fish on a stick for the first time in my life. That’s really a thing in Eastern Austria: fish covered with  delicious seasoning barbecued on stick. I think I’ve heard of this specialty for years and years now from my boyfriend and last sunday was finally the day that I had it! What a day!

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Now. Carry on!