Apricot yogurt cake

I believe I got my love for baking from my mum and my grandma. Growing up there was always something delicious coming from our kitchen and beautiful aromas of baked seasonal fruit, cinnamon, vanilla, cakes, cookies, freshly baked homemade bread were spreading through every corner of our little home. Those times, growing up in ex Yugoslavia, were a modest ones and there weren’t so many candies, sweet treats and varieties of chocolates and ice creams for children but me and my sister never felt any lack of it, our mum made sure that we always had homemade treats at home and those weren’t fancy three-layers naked cakes or the ones with all kinds of cartoon characters made with fondant icing but simple cakes and cookies made with those ‘ordinary’ seasonal ingredients. We loved everything that came from mum’s kitchen and were always peeking into the oven to see what is creating those wonderful smells. Every cake was welcomed with excitement and eaten with pleasure! 🙂

Mum was always using seasonal ingredients so we often had different kinds of fruit cakes depending on what fruit was in season in our Dubrovnik and we loved them all. Apple pies and strudels, apricots or peaches cakes, cherries, sour cherries or blackberries, sweet pears, grapes, fresh figs and so on… Of course there were also puddings, custard or chocolate cakes and desserts, but somehow fruit ones were the most common and we didn’t complain, we loved them all! Oh and crepes were also very often on our kitchen table, not with Nutella like now days but with homemade jams and marmalades.

But let’s go back to cakes for a moment, this Apricot yogurt cake I’m sharing with you today is one of those simple fruit cakes that we enjoyed often and specially on Sundays, usually with a glass of cold milk on the side. I was definitely a little gourmet from an early age and still remember the taste and smell of every treat coming from mum’s kitchen, that’s where my love for food was born and it took me on this exciting journey of food blogging and food photography that I am now on…

I believe all of you who follow me here on my blog and social media know already how much I love simple, easy to make recipes and all of the recipes I share here are made with simple ingredients and you don’t need much time to make them. I follow many food blogs and have so much respect and appreciation for many who, besides beautiful photography, share some more complex and wonderful creations. I often think how I could never create such beautiful multi-layer cakes and I accept that we all have our own styles and ways. Mine is about simplicity, beauty of ordinary, natural. Those are the concepts behind my work and what inspires me the most and I think one of the most important things when doing something creative is not comparing yourself with others but find your own way, your style, visual voice and keep doing what feels right.

If you love apricots, I have few more recipes with them here on the blog, like these simple Baked apricots with vanilla and coconut (vegan, GF) or this delicious Apricot vanilla millet pudding (vegan, GF) so you can  try out those too…

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