This fresh apricot cake recipe is our vegan take on a traditional Austrian apricot cake, or Marillenkuchen in Austrian.
You’ll love this vegan marillenkuchen because…
- It’s super apricot-y!
- It’s an iconic and beloved traditional bake in Austria
- The apricots on top go soft, sweet and juicy
- It’s oh so moreish
- It’s perfect for sharing (if you can resist keeping it all for yourself!)
The secret to our delicious vegan apricot cake
Can you guess the secret ingredient? … Apricots! Wait… what? … That’s right, apricots – in the batter.
Using apricot puree in the batter gives this yummy Austrian dessert great flavour, but also the rich and moist texture of a traditional Austrian Marillenkuchen.
Fruit puree works great in vegan cake baking, taking the role of eggs – just add a bit more baking powder to your standard recipe. Have you tried our banana and chocolate pressure cooker cake recipe?
Apricots in Austria
In Austria, we call an apricot Marille, not the standard German Aprikose. My home region, the Danube valley called Wachau (also a famous wine producing area), is a special place for growing the best kind of apricot in the world, the Wachauer Marille.
Every year – given a good spring – there is an abundance of apricots. In fact, we can usually get them for free, as family and friends owning orchards can’t process all the apricots that their trees produce themselves. So while using twenty or thirty apricots in one batch of cake might sound excessive to others, for us it is just another way of using as much fruit as we can before they spoil.
We made a different version of this recipe before, using aquafaba, a.k.a. chickpea water. It was really nice, but this new and improved version takes this vegan apricot cake recipe to a new level. The texture is so fluffy and moist, and the pureed apricots in the batter add an incredible richness to its taste and golden orange colour.
The puree is also great way of using up the not-so-beautiful apricots that have gone soft or brown in places and won’t make for a very nice cake topping anymore. If you still have loads of imperfect apricots, don’t throw them out just yet – they are just perfect for making the best apricot jam you have ever tasted.
We made Marillenkuchen for our own wedding, that’s how much we love this cake. We hope you love it too!
Happy baking!
Paul and Sophie
Vegan Apricot Cake – Marillenkuchen
Ingredients
- 200 g apricot puree
- 150 g sugar
- 125 ml sparkling water or soy milk
- 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 100 ml vegetable oil
- 280 g plain white flour (or self-raising)
- 4 tsp baking powder (half if using self-raising flour)
- 20 – 24 small apricots halved and destoned
- icing sugar
Instructions
Apricot Puree
- Use a blender or food processor to make the apricot puree out of destoned apricots.
Cake batter
- Whisk together sugar and apricot puree in a mixing bowl.
- Add and whisk in the sparkling water (or soy milk) and vinegar.
- Mix the baking powder into the flour.
- Slowly, and while whisking, add alternating parts of the oil and the flour mix in with the rest of the batter.
- Add a splash more water or soy milk if the batter seems a bit too thick to spread.
Assembling and baking
- Preheat the oven to 175˚C, fan (gas 5-6).
- On a lined large baking sheet, spread out the batter into a uniform layer, covering the whole sheet.
- Lay the top of the cake with rows of halved apricots. Gently press down bigger pieces.
- Bake at 175˚C fan, 20-30 min.
- The cake is done when it has browned a bit, the apricots are soft and a cake needle stuck in the batter beween the fruits comes out clean.
- Fresh out of the oven, sprinkle the cake generously with icing sugar. It will melt on the moist fruit.
Notes
Nutrition
We hope you enjoyed our vegan apricot cake – we really love baking vegan cakes! Here’s some of other favourites:
This is a great cake, thanks for the recipe. Simple, rustic and so good. Perfect way to use up the apricots from my grandmother’s orchard.
Thanks Oana! We are glad you like it. Your Grandmother’s orchard sounds wonderful, happy apricot picking. If you are looking for more apricot ideas, then we adore this apricot jam. Also have you tried just grilling apricots, they are amazing! Sophie
Can I make this cake in a round tart pan?
Hi Aga, yes I think that would work. Line or grease the base and sides first. Sizewise this recipe fills a whole baking sheet (approx 40cm by 30cm) so you will want to adjust the quanity down to suit the pan size. You can use the servings slider in the recipe card to automatically calculate the quanities for you.
We hope you love the cake as much as we do!
Sophie
Yesterday, I baked your Marillenkuchen with yellow and red Pluots instead of apricots, a cross between plums and apricots. I used oat milk in place of sparkling water/soy milk. It was delicious and a huge hit!
Have you baked your plum Kuchen using plum purée instead of the Aquafaba?
My parents live in Bregenz, Austria and are lucky to visit them often with our children. We live in Southern California.
Hi Katey,
Thanks so much for your lovely comment 🙂 We’re delighted the cake was a hit! <3
We've never heard of pluots before! Sounds amazing! Do you make jam from them as well? Or pluot powidl?
We have not tried it with plum puree instead of aquafaba, but that was before we discovered how well fruit puree works for the apricot cake! 😉 We'll try when we make our next plum cake 🙂 We think it should work just as fine though.
Good to hear it worked with oat milk. We make our own oat milk - much easier than making soy milk - so we'll definitely give that a go next time.
Bregenz is really gorgeous in the summer, right next to the lake...
Love from England to California,
Sophie and Paul