Summer Excursion - Sonoma and Little Apricot Cakes

I have been away from my blog for too long - trips to LA, Santa Barbara, Big Sur and Sonoma and visits from friends and family combined with work and life have kept me busy. But here is a little snippet of our visit with our friends Gil and Gibbo and a wonderful day spent together in Sonoma. Scribe Winery is my new favorite, the setting was idyllic, the people friendly, the vibe laid back and the wine scrumptious. 

I've been cooking, that wonderful simple casual kind of meal that seems to come so easily in the summer with the onset of warmth and the first crops of peaches and tomatoes, I just haven't been very good about photographing it. Here is a simple summer dessert that I found in Bon Appetit - Little Apricot Cakes. The texture was nice but I think my batch needed a little more sugar - in spite of this critique, they readily disappeared.

Combine 1 cup flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder and a quarter tsp salt in a medium bowl. In a large bowl beat together 3/4 stick butter and 1/3 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Add 1 large egg, the zest of one lemon and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Then in 3 additions beginning and ending with the dry mixture, add in the flour mix and 1/3 cup whole milk. I stirred in a dollop of sour cream. Pour the batter in a greased muffin tin and top with thinly sliced pieces of apricot. Sprinkle with raw sugar and bake at 350 for about 25 minutes.