Sometimes I buy way too much fruit. I know I’ll eat it, but occasionally I wonder if I want to eat it in its natural state or take it beyond, to a more decadent and delicious place. Rainier cherries rarely need any assistance, their light yellow flesh and red-yellow skin a perfect treat on their own. The same with watermelon – I recently bought a 14-pounder, and while eating its cool watery pinkness I kept thinking about sorbet. But watermelon is so close to sorbet to me there’s no need to do more with it.

However, this week’s fruit tricked me a bit. I got two pounds of local apricots (from Goldbar, WA, if you want to know). After eating about two of them, I thought about ways to make them even more glorious. The dessert that kept popping into my head was an apricot tart.

Do you know what? Before yesterday, I never had an apricot tart! I took a look at some of my favorite food blogs and promptly found an appetizing recipe from Orangette (her recipe is based on a tart recipe from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook as well as a crust recipe from a friend). The original crust recipe called for using vinegar, but I cut it out and things turned out wonderfully.

For crust (adapted from Orangette’s favorite crust recipe):
4 Tbsp. ice water
1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
¾ tsp. salt
9 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter

For filling:
1 lb. apricots, pitted and sliced
1/3 cup sugar
3 pinches of salt

For crust, add the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Cut the butter into 1-Tbsp chunks, and drop each chunk into the flour mixture one at a time, pulsing a few times in between to incorporate. Once you have a sandy-looking mixture with a few pea-sized pieces, add the ice water one tablespoon at a time. Pulse in between tablespoons of water. At this point the mixture will look like slightly moist sand. Pour contents onto a flat surface, and push together (it will actually start sticking together!) Make a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate a couple of hours.

After the dough has cooled in the fridge, take it out and let it warm up a few minutes. Turn the oven on to 375. Roll out dough and place into a tart pan with a removable bottom.

While dough is chilling, slice apricots and mix with sugar/salt in bowl. Arrange apricots in tart pan.

Bake tart 45 minutes.

Once your tart has cooked and cooled, serve with real vanilla ice cream.