Apricot Tarts and Pies

[Rover]

There is a fantastic Apricot & Cherry Tart in Chez Panisse Deserts which I've made many times. I'll post a better description when I get home after work.

Rover

Edited July 21, 2009 by Rover (log)

[Rover]

As I pulled my Chez Panisse Desserts book from the shelf and noted that is festooned with post-its and bookmarks, I realized just how much I had prepared from it. It continues to remain amongst my favourites for desserts, pies, tarts.

Apricot & Cherry Tart: It's a puff pastry base and filled with the fruit while still chilled. The cherries are pitted and the apricots sliced in half & stoned. Crush some Italian macaroons & sprinkle over the base of the shell and arrange a tight circle of cherries around the perimeter. Place the apricots cut side down, pressed tightly together and fill the shell. Fill any available spaces with more cherries. Sprinkle with a little sugar, depending on taste and sweetness of the fruit.... and bake.

Brush with a glaze after removing from the oven.

It's just quite simply - dreamy.

Rover

[rickster]

I over-poached the apricots. Kerry's recipe is for pears, I think. Apricots take more like 3-4 minutes to poach

I don't think you need to poach the apricots at all, probably not the peaches either unless they're on the hard side

[CanadianBakin']

Apricots seem to be a popular choice for galettes. I'm going to try one in the Tartine cookbook.

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I've now tried this recipe and I'm really happy with the results. I have a few more to bake off and I'll try to remember to take a pic. They use a frissage-type method for the pastry which makes a terrific crust. Kind of half way between regular pie pastry and puff pastry.

[LindaK]

This post reminded me that there is a recipe I've long wanted to try for an Apricot-Almond-Raspberry Tart in Francois Payard's "Simply Sensational Desserts." It looks delicious.

I love apricots but here in the northeast fresh apricots are both hard to come by and arrive in farmers markets very late in the season--long after fresh raspberries have left. The recipe says that canned apricots are okay, but somehow I can't bring myself to buy canned apricots.

[Dave Hatfield]

Dave, in step 4 you say "halve and seed" the apricots: do you also slice them? Or you lay concentric circles with the full apricot halves?

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Chris,

If you look at Dave's blog, French Food Focus, I believe you'll see a picture of said apricot tart - very pretty, by the way.

Looks like "halved and seeded" but not sliced.

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John

Thanks for looking at my blog & as per my post above my apologies for being slow to respond.

As it happens we just came back from dinner at a friends where she served apricot tart. She uses the same method as do I, but she added a glaze made of apricot jam, brandy & a bit of water. She boiled & reduced that a bit then glazed the tart & baked it for 15 minutes more.

The result was terrific! Think I'll try this addition.

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As threatened I made an apricot tart the other night and I glazed it.

In this case I used some Four Fruit marmalade that I recently made as a glaze. (the marmalade hadn't set up as firmly as I would have liked, but the slightly runny consistency was about right for a glaze.) I cooked the pie then took it out and gently brushed on the glaze. It was very very nice.

A nice addition to this simple open faced tart.

edited to correct typos

Edited July 23, 2009 by Dave Hatfield (log)