Stone fruits!
I’m pretty sure I could eat my weight in plums. Don’t even get me started on nectarines. And apricots! What velvety beauties they are! The Greeks called apricots “the golden eggs of the sun.” How pretty is that?
They’re all in season right now (from May to September), so you can easily find them in your market.
Apricots occupy a particularly sweet space in my heart. My birthday cake was always a “Paradise Cake”—a white box cake with an apricot and coconut frosting.
Here is a great Apricot Crumble Tart recipe–a paean to the sweet-tart wonderfulness (is that a word?) of apricots. You’ll love the contrasting textures and flavors in every bite of this tart. I guarantee that you will keep coming back again and again (and again) for just one more taste. (You’ve got the irrefutable evidence of that last statement right in front of you. Look at the cake in the background above. Keep in mind that I live alone.)
This recipe is adapted from David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen cookbook. The book is available through your local bookstore. Lebovitz, an alum of the iconic Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, and now a resident of Paris, also has a newsletter online. You can find the newsletter here.
Apricot Crumble Tart
Ingredients
- For the Dough
- 6 T. unsalted butter (chilled)
- 1/2 C. granulated sugar
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 1/4 C. all-purpose flour
- 1/2 t. sea salt or kosher salt
- For the Crumble Topping
- 3/4 C. whole almonds
- 1/2 C. all-purpose flour
- 1/3 C. packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 t. sea salt or kosher salt
- 6 T. unsalted butter (chilled and cubed)
- For the Filling
- 2 pounds fresh apricots and plums (pitted and quartered)
- 3 T. granulated sugar
- 1 T. cornstarch
- 1 t. vanilla extract
- 1/4 t. almond extract
Directions
- Step 1 Prepare a 9- or 10-inch springform pan by spraying it with non-stick spray. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Step 2 To make the dough, mix butter and sugar on medium speed in the bowl of your stand mixer using the paddle attachment. Mix just until no lumps of butter remain. Add egg yolks to the mixture. Add flour and salt to the mixture. Continue to mix until the dough comes together. Press the dough into the bottom and up the sides of the prepared springform pan. (The dough is sticky, by the way.)You can use the heel of your hand to do this. Press the dough until it extends about half way up the sides of the springform pan. Put the pan into your freezer and freeze for 30 minutes.
- Step 3 While your dough is freezing, prepare the crumble topping. Put the almonds, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt into the bowl of your food processor and pulse until the almonds are processed into small pieces. Add butter and pulse to combine the ingredients. Continue to pulse the ingredients until the mixture begins to form into clumps. Chill this mixture while you prepare the filling.
- Step 4 To prepare the filling, pit and slice the fruit and combine the apricots (and plums if you are using them) in a bowl with the sugar, cornstarch and extracts. Spoon the filling into the tart shell you have chilled in the freezer. Put the crumble topping on top of the fruit. Bake for 50 minutes at 375 degrees F. When your tart is done, the crumble topping will have begun to take on a nice brown color. Remove the tart from the oven and let it cool on a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. You can serve the tart with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, but it is wonderful served without toppings.
