Apricot Days

by Boschek

Kranz

Good morning. It looks like there is going to be a bit of a learning curve with this blogging software, but that is alright. Thankfully, I have some experience with HTML so it should not be too bad.

The end of July our wine maker brought us a 10 pound basket of beautiful apricots. Many of them were almost as large as peaches. Apricots are one of the few fruits that taste best when cooked, so we set to work making an apricot pie with lattice crust:

pie

Apricots have two close friends, cinnamon and almonds. I used a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon in the pie and it was delicious with vanilla ice cream.

Karin immediately began pitting one kilo of apricots to make jam. She used about 60 ml water and 600 g white sugar and cooked to 225 °F (107 °C) and it turned out beautifully. It made 5 jars and we have already finished one of them.

20160729_181844

A friend on Facebook, Chef David Tushingham, who also collects and restores Triumph sports cars from the 1950s and 1960s, put a little bird in my ear that said “Marillenknödel.” These wonderful apricot dumplings from Austria and Bavaria are made by wrapping a dough, made with Topfen (quark – fresh cheese), around a whole apricot, simmering them in lightly salted water and then coating them with sweetened bread crumbs. When served still warm they are a dream!

20160806_172142

After we used up all 5 kg of apricots we bought another kilo and I plan to make an Aprikosenkuchen this afternoon. I will used puff pastry and roasted almond flakes and may add a shot of Amaretto to bring out the almond note. We’ll report on it tomorrow.

For now we’ll say, Guten Appetit!