Week 22- A Vision of Apricots Dancing in My Head

Dance, dance, dance.  This weekend was all about my daughter's ballet recital.  It's amazing how much planning goes into being on stage for 10 minutes! I have to say the instructor was very smart and put my little ballerina in an ensemble piece with much older ballerinas.  A real tutu outfit and dancing with big girls?  Can it get any better when you are 4?

Gratuitous cute ballerina photo

After watching scads of peach and apricot clad ballerinas dancing around, I was inspired to make an apricot pie.  (For the record, my sister had also brought some apricots over a few weeks ago and the girls went crazy for them.) I've never had apricot pie, so I didn't know what to expect.

What a delicious pie!  We actually ate a few of the apricots that were bought for the pie, so we could have used a little more fruit, but this was a delicious, fresh-tasting pie.


Old Fashioned Fresh Apricot Pie
Adapted from Diana's Recipe Book
Link to Apricot Pie recipe

2 lbs fresh apricots
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons brandy (the recipe called for apricot brandy, but I used regular brandy)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons quick cooking tapioca
1/4 teaspoon salt
Double pie crust

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Combine apricots, vanilla and brandy in a large bowl.

Combine sugars, cinnamon, tapioca and salt in another bowl.  Gently stir the sugar mixture into the apricots.  Let stand 15 minutes.

Roll out crust.  Spoon filling into crust then make the second set of dough into a lattice crust (my husband decided to the do the lattice crust since the last time I made one it was ridiculously ugly!)

Place pie in the oven (on a cookie sheet) for 10 minutes.  Reduce oven to 375 degrees and bake for 40-45 minutes.

YUM!