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.

rosemary apricot bars

These bars, from the Baked Boys, are a not-too-sweet, lovely grown-up tea cookie. I normally shudder at the thought shy away from throwing an herb into a cookie, but after reading a raving (in a good way, not lunatical) post by David Lebovitz, I wanted to try it out. I've always loved apricots, fresh or dried, and apricot bars. I've also always wondered why there seemed to be a weird residue left in the saucepan after cooking and plumping them up.

It has to do with added sulfur, used in order to preserve the bright orange color which we associate with the apricot. In this recipe, the pastry chefs ask specifically to use unsulfured apricots, which I found at Trader Joe's.

danish braid with apricot and cream filling

I signed up to bring pastries for Teacher Appreciation Breakfast this week.  Having loved danishes since very little (Entenmann's Cheese Danish Twist being my earliest danish memory,) yet never having made one, I figured this would be a great time to try it.  And if the pastry failed, Entenmann's could be always be Plan B.

The dough and fillings were prepped the night before. Can you see the huge butter chunks?  MMM. Both fillings were conveniently made in the microwave.

I particularly loved the process of rolling the dough.  Roll, fold into thirds, roll, fold, roll, fold; it's very therapeutic.  And the smells.  Yeast and butter.  You can't beat it.