Marillenkuchen

Every July, the Wachau valley fills with apricots. Small, golden, blushed with orange, smelling so intensely of themselves that you can find the market stalls before you see them. I remember walking through the Grünmarkt in Salzburg as a child with Gretel and my grandmother Eva, and Gretel picking up Marillen one by one, turning each in her hand, pressing the flesh near the stem to test for ripeness. She'd buy a full crate and half of them wouldn't survive the walk home because we'd eat them on the way.

Marillenkuchen is what you make when the apricots are perfect and you don't want to do anything clever to them. You press the halves cut-side up into a soft, buttery yeast dough, the kind Austrians call Germteig, and bake it until the fruit collapses into something jammy and concentrated and the dough rises golden and tender around each piece. That's it. No crumble, no glaze, no almond cream filling. The apricot does the talking.

This is a sheet cake, a Blechkuchen, the kind Austrian grandmothers make on a weekday afternoon when the fruit is ripe and the oven is already warm. It comes to the table on the tray it was baked in, dusted with powdered sugar, cut into squares. You eat it with your hands or with a cake fork, standing in the garden or sitting at the kitchen table. It's not fussy. The only thing it demands is good fruit. Gretel always said: if the Marillen aren't good, don't bake with them. Make something else and wait for the right ones.