Apricot Jam Cake

My mom recently got me a subscription to the most delightful monthly newspaper: Baking Nation. A newspaper delivered every month filled with baking related history, recipes, puzzles, horoscopes, and tips and tricks. What more could you ask of a newspaper?? Nothing, I say. There’s also a cozy mystery story with monthly installments, so it’s really got everything.

In the last edition, there was a recipe for a jam cake to use up the dregs of any jars of jam you might have in your fridge. I actually only have one lingering jar of jam, but it’s one that I rarely use: apricot. My dad is the only one who eats it, and while he does visit every few weeks, most of the time it just sits there. So I decided to use it up. (Conveniently while he is here visiting, so he can appreciate it!) My parents are visiting for the weekend and asked what the occasion was for this cake… The occasion was that there are more people to eat dessert, and there’s apricot jam to use up! What more occasion does their need to be?

If you do need more reason, my niece started singing “Happy Birthday” when she saw the cake on the table. Which brings up the excellent point that, much like it is always 5 o’clock somewhere, it is also always someone’s birthday somewhere.

The Baking Nation recipe worked for any jam, but it had a suggestion for apricot jam, which was to add honeyed almonds. And I had almonds to use up too! So… It simply had to be made.

I also added some oats because I didn’t feel like I had quite enough almonds. It sort of accidentally turned it into a granola-like topping, but… I really think it worked!

We’re also coming to the tail end of the February doldrums, and this felt like a great pick-me-up. I think February is the most doldrums-prone month. It’s not a bad month, but it’s an awfully boring one. Sorry to Black people. We made your history month both the shortest and the most boring one. If it were up to me, you’d get… well, any other month I guess.

Whenever I say or see the word “doldrums,” I think of the novel The Phantom Tollbooth. I haven’t read it since fourth grade, and I’ve forgotten many of the details (perhaps it’s time for a re-read). But there’s a section in the book where they are driving through the “Doldrums,” which are, if I am remembering correctly, just a super boring area in the magical world they’re in. And they just drive through them and it feels like it takes ages and they’re super bored.

The Phantom Tollbooth is also where I learned the word “dodecahedron.” (And also whenever someone says “rhododendron,” I think of The Phantom Tollbooth, but based on a quick Google, I think that’s because I confused them with dodecahedrons.) I truly don’t remember much else of the book. I remember it was one of the first books I was ever assigned to read, since that started in 3rd or 4th grade. It was assigned the same year I read The Secret Garden – probably the book I hated reading the most. We also had to read First Steps, which is the memoir of a girl who got Polio. I enjoyed that book, but was also convinced I was going to somehow get polio (I had not learned of the vaccine yet. I think my teachers were saving that information as some sort of happy ending for us to learn about via the book). All this to say: I had a rough start to assigned reading. But thankfully, I remember liking The Phantom Tollbooth.

I am bringing all this up just because it’s amazing how random memory associations can be! I’ve said “doldrums” a lot of times since the fourth grade. I’ve experienced them plenty of times, in a way I had not in the fourth grade. (Hello 2021! Looking at you!) And every time, I’ve thought about that one section in a book I read in 2009. Crazy what sticks with you!

Anyways. I said it of the Hot Chocolate Bundt Cake and I’m saying it about this cake: there is nothing like a little mini cake to pull you out of the doldrums! I don’t remember how they got out of the Doldrums in the book, but this is a surefire way to do it in real life!

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