apricot almond bar

What do you do when your dad gives you a 3 lb. bag of dried apricots? You go hunting for a recipe, that's what you do.

Luckily for me, The Gourmet Cookie Book had a lovely recipe with dried apricots, dating from the 1960's (!) I tweaked it ever so slightly, with some puréeing and a little salt and butter addition. In fact, it's quite similar to the Cherry Pecan Bars that I made awhile back. So I cross-referenced with that recipe and ended up with this one.

ricciarelli — italian almond cookies

It started with a rumbly in the tumbly a few hours after a meal. I dismissed the discomfort. Told her to take a Tums. Talk to me in the morning.

That rumbly continued for days, always occurring after a meal. Since peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bowls of oatmeal, pasta dinners, and cookie snacks were involved one way or another, I told her to cut out all wheat and oat products.

Wouldn't you know it, eliminating glutens seemed to do the trick. We officially have a Gluten-Free Girl in the house.

I am slightly sad. My Taste-Tester, Cheerleader and Fellow Cookie Lover now has severe limitations, but it has opened up a whole new world to me.  I have started eyeing, researching and buying gluten-free products.

citrus-almond pound cake

Do you cut out recipes from magazines and newspapers? Or are you fully paperless now- downloading recipes as needed?

I am firmly in the paper camp and cannot imagine life without my scraps and slips- torn, yellowed, stained and dog-eared. One such piece — actually, newspaper section— was tucked into my junk basket, and stumbling on it was like finding a precious treasure.

{bwd} brown sugar bundt cake

The book that started my whole blogging adventure— Baking: From My Home to Yours  by Dorie Greenspan— is finally making its debut here.  I have never featured a Dorie Greenspan recipe, because although I created the blog to join the Tuesday with Dorie baking club, I JUST missed out... they closed their doors to new members right when I applied.

This group, Baking With Dorie, was founded by two bakers who similarly wanted to join but couldn't. We will post twice monthly, which is a perfect pace. I just told The Family that I needed to cut back on sweets, but now I'm eating my words and eating this cake! The recipe can be found on Chaya's Comfy Cook Blog.

I was pretty sure I would like The Brown Sugar Bundt Cake recipe, as it included nut flour, butter and buttermilk.  It called for pears and prunes too, which was too autumnal for me.  Instead, I substituted 1 cup toasted, chopped almonds and used almond flour as the nut flour of choice.

Lots of brown sugar.

Almond flour adds interesting flavor.

Toasted, chopped almonds.

blueberry almond streusel tart

Blueberries are overrunning the refrigerator.  Between the Costco-sized container and The Dad's twice-weekly drop-off, I needed to bake up a recipe that would use the fruit before it starts deteriorating.

This recipe is an old favorite; I jotted it down from Bon Appétit in 1992, which must be the same year I purchased the tart pans. They called it Blueberry Streusel Tart; I added "almond" to the title. I've tweaked three things: changing the ratio of butter to shortening, adding a little almond extract to enhance the nut flavor, and pre-baking the tart crust to ensure a crisp texture.

Blueberry Almond Tart

adapted from Bon Appétit, July 1992

Crust

1½ cups flour

3 tablespoons sugar

pinch of salt

8 tablespoons butter, cut in ½-inch pieces and chilled

4 tablespoons chilled vegetable shortening

about 6 tablespoons ice water

Filling

1½ cups blanched and slivered almonds

¾ cup sugar

½ cup butter, room temperature

1 tablespoon flour

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon almond extract

Topping

6 tablespoons flour

6 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter, cut into ½-inch pieces

3 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen, thawed and drained

For the Crust:

Blend the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor.  Add the butter and the shortening and cut in with the pulse button until the mixture looks like coarse meal.  Blend in the water 1 tablespoon at a time, enough to bind the dough.  Gather the dough into a ball, flatten it into a disk.  Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least one hour, or up to one day ahead.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.  Roll out the dough to 13 inches.  Transfer the dough to an 11-inch tart pan, with removable bottom.  Bake the crust for 10 minutes, until it has lost the raw look but is not brown.  If the crust has puffed a bit, gently pat it down with an oven mitt.

For the Filling:

Finely grind the almonds with sugar in the processor.  Add the butter, egg, flour, vanilla and almond extracts.  Blend well.

For the Topping:

Mix the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.  Add the butter using your fingertips.

Ladle the filling into the pre-baked crust.  Smooth it out.  Top the filling with blueberries; sprinkle the topping over the fruit.  

Place the tart on a cookie sheet and bake until the crust is golden and the filling is set, about an hour.

raspberry thumbprint cookie {cookie carnival}

After making the trifecta of Rice Krispies Treats, m&m Cookies, and Brownies for my students' recitals, these Thumbprint Cookies seemed a good way to round out the reception offerings.  They are always fun to make with The Kids, who enjoy poking gently indenting the dough with a finger.

Or in The Boy's case, for the sake of maximum impact with minimum effort, four fingers.

I have never made a thumbprint cookie with almond paste before and was curious to see how it would turn out.  The cookies were on the sweet side (so I decreased the amount of sugar below,) but nevertheless, they were delicious, soft, and almondy.  They stayed soft for several days in an airtight container.