apricot galette with brown sugar cinnamon pastry.

Hello, world.

Remember me? I used to write inane, cheerful and cake-centric food blog posts. It made me rather happy, and the people were lovely, and my friends got to eat lots of sugar, and really everyone was a winner. Apart from my mother, who funded my flour rations. But it was kind of for the greater good, and ultimately, she got a cake like this for her birthday, so who was complaining?

But then the metaphorical winter came. And, er, also the literal winter. And also I went to uni and couldn't really afford that much butter - or, I could afford that much butter, but I couldn't afford all the fresh vegetables and salad to balance it out and prevent, you know, heart disease.

But recently, the sun has come back, and I came home; the summer produce has invoked the drive to put fruit in pastry (I can't look at a piece of fruit without wanting to put it in a tart case! I keep snatching nectarines out of my sister's hand and shouting things like, 'PIE!', overzealously. I'm not even very good with pastry); I began to get sickeningly enthusiastic over cooking for my family again; and I developed this strange tic where I compulsively add lemon zest or juice to just about everything.

I thought about going to some sort of support group over the lemon thing, but when I sounded this out to a couple of people I was forced to conclude that no such group exists.

So I came back to blogging. Please be gentle.

This galette is the perfect example of my newfound pastry-urges (and hello, it contains the phrase brown sugar cinnamon pastry in its name. Surely you understand). This is a terrible thing to admit, but I don't think I'd eaten a fresh apricot before this - dried apricots, apricot yoghurt, apricot squash; but never the real shebang - but even with my lack of experience, I could tell the ones we had were perfect. I didn't even know when apricots were in season - for the record: right now.

Appearance-wise, this tart was a little less than perfect (one reason I like these freeform galettes; you can say you were going for 'rustic'), but I suspect this is due to my resolutely slicing the apricots rather than just halving them (there wasn't really enough room, but I loved the tumbled effect), not to mention that I just couldn't resist that pastry - brown. sugar. cinnamon. - and there was probably supposed to be a good deal more of it than I, um, ended up with. All the same, the galette I ended up with was not a 'serves 8-10' affair; I'd say closer to six, if you don't want to roll your pastry out uncomfortably thin (and it's better if you don't).

Apricot Galette with Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pastry

The beauty of this is how incredibly simple it all is; the pastry is made in minutes in the food processor and the fruit is just tossed with brown sugar (and - I couldn't help it - lemon zest, because no one's ever told me that lemon *doesn't* go with apricot...). This means you could use just about any fruit - this is crying out to be made with plums, in that late Summer-early Autumn period around August and September. Do it for me.

Adapted from BBC Good Food magazine.
Serves 6-8.

pastry:
150g plain flour
50g wholemeal flour
2tsp cinnamon
140g cold butter, cut into small chunks
85g light muscavado sugar
optional zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 egg, separated

filling:
700g apricots, halved and stoned (I sliced mine)
1 tbsp demerara sugar

1. Oven to 200C. Put the flour & cinnamon in a food processor and add the butter, processing to make fine crumbs. Reserve 2tbsp of the muscavado sugar, then add the remainder and the lemon zest, and briefly mix. Add the egg yolk and 1 tbsp water, then pulse to make a firm dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and briefly knead. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.

2. Toss apricots in the reserved muscavado sugar. Roll out pastry on a sheet of baking parchment to a roughly 30cm round. Slide pastry & paper onto a large baking sheet. Cover with apricot halves/slices, cut sides up, and fold the edges of the pastry over the fruit, leaving the centre uncovered.

3. Lightly beat egg white and brush over the pastry. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake for 30-35 mins until the pastry is crisp and the apricots tender. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.