Apricots, apricots, everywhere!

Oh, excitement at the Coop (fabulous grocery store in Lebanon and Hanover, NH) last week: apricots for $1.99/lb! Now, for you dears in California or other places where apricots grow, you might think, "meh, so?" It's kind of a big deal for New England. So I sent my husband up (he was there anyway) to buy me 3lbs of apricots for me to play with. 

I planned to make coconut&lime's apricot upside down cake, but I was unsure of how to use the other 2.5lbs. After hemming and hawing and looking at all sorts of options, I realized that the apricots had to be used, stat, so I made Martha's apricot jam. I highly recommend both recipes.

Apricot Upside Down Cake, from Coconut&Lime

Cake:

Cream

7T butter, softened

1/3c light brown sugar

together til fluffy. Add in 1 egg, 1/3c sour cream and 1t vanilla, beat for a minute. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together 1cup flour, 1.5t baking powder, 1/2t ginger and a pinch of salt.

Beat flour mixture into butter/sour cream mixture til combined. The batter will be sticky.

In an 8in round baking pan (sprayed/buttered with 1T butter), arrange 4 halved and pitted apricots, cut side down, and sprinkle with 2T brown sugar (my accidental change- it worked fine).

Bake at 350F for about 40 min. Let cool, then loosen edges with a knife, and invert on a serving plate.

For a photo, see coconut&lime's: 1. my computer has issues, and I don't want to make it do unnecessary tasks, and 2. her cake was prettier than mine.

Apricot Jam, from Martha Stewart

2.5lbs apricots

3cups sugar

1/4 water

juice of 1 lemon

Cut the apricots into 1-inch pieces (I left the skin on). Take 4-5 of the pits, smash the hard outer shell with a hammer, and save the soft, almond-shaped inner seed. In a large pot, combine the apricot pieces, soft apricot seeds, sugar and water, and cook over medium heat to dissolve the sugar. Keep stirring until reduced and thickened, about 15-20 min. I kept lowering the heat little by little as the jam starting splattering all over my hand. Once it's thickened/after 15-20min, turn off the heat, stir in the lemon juice, and let cool. Transfer to mason jars (I used Tupperware, my pickle-queen mother would be so ashamed to hear her daughter doesn't have boxes of mason jars in the basement! :( ), keep refrigerated. Be sure to lick the pot and the spoon, because there is nothing like warm apricot jam. It's off-limits for me this week while I'm on a 5-day reset diet, and I've been dreaming of it.

Next week I'll tell you how I've used my 4cups of apricot jam. I have plans, oh yes.