The end of June and beginning of July brings with it a changing of the culinary seasons: out goes the strawberry -- the once crimson-bedecked fields now nothing but dirt and stripped-down ankle-high leafage -- and in comes the beloved apricot. It is in many ways hard to encapsulate just how integral the apricot is to the Viennese kitchen and making a list of the things one can make with it inevitably leads to neglect by omission. But here goes. Whole apricots can be encased in dough, boiled, and then waltzed through buttery breadcrumbs to make Marillenknödel. Cooked down, the apricots can be turned into jam, after which it can be used to glue the cocoa-enriched layers of a Sachtertorte together, pumped into the centre of a freshly-baked Krapfen, or spread onto piping-hot Palatschicken (pancakes) before they are rolled up and dusted with powdered sugar. The fruit can be turned into a sweet, syrupy nectar -- best in my opinion diluted with soda water to make a Spritzer -- or perhaps a schnapps for an intense, after-dinner digestif. And then there are the pastries like the Marillenspitz and Marillenmarmeladecroissant. And apricot ice cream (and Marilleneisknödel, lest we forget). And so it goes on.
Of course, the best vehicles for something seasonal and as precious as the domestically-grown Austrian apricot are often the simplest, which is why the recipe I turn to is the Marillenkuchen. To describe it is to give the game away. All that is required is a simple cake batter flavoured with vanilla (and lemon zest, if you insist, though I'd prefer here that you didn't), which is spread out across a baking pan measuring around 13x9'' and studded with halved apricots, the skin side facing downward and plunged into the soft batter. (Should the apricots not be at their best, there is the option, as shown above, to replace the stone with half of a sugar cube, though in the summer, this feels like over-egging the pudding, as it were.) My recipe for Marillenkuchen comes from a cookbook, published in 2016, by the ever-popular cafe Vollpension in Vienna's fourth district, about which I shall go into more detail another time. Simply to say now that the originator of this recipe is Oma Charlotte, who adds that this cake can be made with another fruit when they are in season: cherries, rhubarb, or plums. Just remember, she says, to always insert whatever fruit you're using into the raw batter skin-side down, lest it bleed its juices into the cake itself, ruining all your hard work.
