I have only made this recipe twice.   The first time was during my twenties, when I was doing a lot of baking, trying out recipes that I found in books (and sometimes making up my own versions).   This recipe was delicious; but it was also rather complicated, and depended on finding a store that sold cooking apricots, which was getting increasingly difficult.
        The second time I made this cake was for my parents Golden Wedding celebrations.   My sister made a surprise visit from England; and I made them a Golden tea.   Actually, my sister's visit was not a surprise to me:   I was the one who went and picked her up from the airport.   I had to borrow my parents' car, not having one of my own.   I told them quite openly that I was going to pick up one of their presents—but they never guessed what it was.
        I'm not sure what the savoury part of the Golden tea was—maybe fried mushrooms on toast.   I strongly suspect that we then had toasted crumpets.   For fruit, we had a golden fruit salad, made of canned apricots, pineapple chunks, and mandarins, served in the juice from the apricots and mandarins.   And then there was cake.
        The notion of a Golden tea came from a series of books that I loved when I was a little girl.   They are about a little girl named Milly Molly Mandy whose family lived in a thatched cottage in an English village in the 1920s.   Her grandparents had a Golden Wedding in one of the stories; and they, too, had a celebratory meal in which everything was (more or less) golden.

MCG FSW

Ingredients

Directions

Initial Preparations
Cut the dried apricots into chunks, and put them in a saucepan with a cup of water.   Let them soak for at least one hour.   Then bring to the boil, and simmer for thirty to forty minutes until they are tender.   Put the stewed apricots into a blender or food processor, and purée them until they are smooth.   Then let them cool (if necessary in the refrigerator).

Mixing the Batter

Put the ground hazelnuts, flour, and baking powder in a mixing bowl, along with a quartercupful of the sugar.

Separate the eggs.   Beat the egg whites with another quartercupful of the sugar until they are stiff.

Beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl with the remaining quartercupful of sugar until they are thick and light in colour.

Mix the dry ingredients with the egg yolks.

Fold in the egg whites.

Baking the Cake

Line a shallow 9" x 14" cake pan with aluminum foil.   Butter the foil heavily, and dust it with flour.

Pour in the cake batter, and tilt the pan slightly in your hands till the batter is evenly spread.

Bake at 350°F for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Remove the cake from the oven, and cool it on a wire rack (still in the pan).

Sprinkle two tablespoonsful of icing sugar over the top of the cake.

Turn the cake over onto a sheet of waxed paper, and carefully remove the aluminum foil.

Making the Filling

Whip the cream until it is starting to thicken.   Add the icing sugar, and continue to beat the cream until it is very thick.

Fold in the puréed apricots.

The filling should be stiff in texture, like heavily whipped cream.   If it is not, then refrigerate it for fifteen minutes, and then beat it again.

Assembling the Cake
Spread the filling on the cake.   Roll the cake up along the width, so that the finished cake is as long as the cake pan is wide.   Then place the cake on a cake plate, with the overlapped edge downwards, so that the cake will not be able to unroll itself.

Decorating the Cake
Whip three-quarters of a cup of whipping cream with a tablespoonful of icing sugar.   Pipe rosettes down the centre of the cake.   Decorate the centre of each rosette with a whole undamaged hazelnut.

Makes one large cake.

MCG FSW