Tender Sweet Apricots

I always have some sort of dried fruit in my pantry. Always. Dried fruits keep practically forever and are endlessly versatile. One of my very favorite dried fruits is the dried apricot. Soft and sweet with a honeyed-tang. They are amazing in everything from oatmeal at breakfast to turkey stuffing at Thanksgiving. Dipped in dark chocolate, well then  they've dried and gone to heaven.*

In summer though, my thoughts always turn to fresh fruit, and the little fragrant fresh apricots often get overlooked as I bee-line to the berries, peaches, plums and melons. They even get overshadowed by their own genetic offshoots: pluots, apriums, etc. Whats next? Grapricots? Aprinanas? It's time I took another look at the subtle and classic blushing beauty that is the fresh apricot... 

 

These desserts all look so very tempting, my problem now is to pick one:

• A yummy Apricot Cake and Apricot Fold Over Pie both from Serious Eats
• Tea-Steamed Apricots & Blackberries on page 20 of Healthy Desserts  (Williams-Sonoma Collection, 1995 )
• This gorgeous Walnut Apricot Bread also over at Serious Eats uses one of my favorite flavor combinations
• Apricot Slice, a tasty looking thing that would be equally at home either for breakfast or dessert (I just love those). Found on page 23 of Best Of Baking (Wolter and Teubner, 1980) 
• The Martha Stewart Cookbook (1995) has Apricots Baked With Vanilla Sugar (pg 422) and two kinds of Apricot Tart on page 453 (one with Grand Marnier and the other with rum... yum!). 
• Also from Martha are two apricot-almond recipes: a Fresh Apricot Tart and a simple dish of Baked Apricots with Almond Topping..

* I really have to apologize for that cheesy awful joke.