15 Apricot Recipes That Are Truly Amazing and Absolutely Delicious
Fresh, ripe apricots are juicy and taste both sweet and a bit tart. With a tender texture that's not to be missed, they're miles apart from the dried variety. Try these lush little beauties in pies, tarts, cobblers, and more.
Silk-skinned and sunrise-colored, splitting deliciously along a ripe seam to reveal a pit neatly nestled in velvet, apricots are an ephemeral highpoint of summer's sequential stone fruit season. Their appearance at market is close to fleeting if you are enjoying regionally-grown fruit. Pay attention, then pounce as soon as they arrive.
At their best, apricots are tender, sweetly juicy, and perfumed, with a gentle but tongue-edging sense of acid. If you do discover apricot perfection (your nose and tongue will tell you), you should simply sit down quietly somewhere and eat them one by one, with no embellishments. Savor every drop of juice. It is a precious thing, this moment of apricot ripeness, and you will remember it.
When harvested and eaten too early, apricots are more crisp and sour, but they can be transformed by cooking: So, if your apricots are tart, plan to use them in desserts or to make jam. Even disappointingly insipid fruit, bred less for flavor and more for appearance and for enduring refrigerated journeys across the continent (or from another hemisphere), can be redeemed. Who has not been seduced by their vivid, supermarket curves as an interminable winter stretches on? It is always fun to cheat and buy apricots from climates whose summers coincide with our coldest months (and darkest thoughts).
Whether you are fortunate enough to celebrate an apricot glut, want to honor a coveted ripe handful, or have succumbed to out-of-season treasure at the local supermarket, here we have curated our best fresh apricot recipes to offer you snacks, drinks, bakes, broils, and more.
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Brown Butter Apricots with Brioche and Ice Cream
The crisp richness of pan-warm and toasty brioche beneath hot, buttery apricots begs for a cool scoop of vanilla ice cream.
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Strawberry and Apricot Crisp with Pine-Nut Crumble
Celebrate the juiciest fruits of early summer with this oat-and pine nut-crunchy crumble.
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Apricot Appetizer with Crème Fraîche
Fill ripe, sweet apricots with acerbic and creamy crème fraîche, then finish with a flurry of fresh black pepper. This is a gorgeous party platter for a warm summer night.
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Sauternes with Frozen Stone Fruit
Sophisticated and irreverent, this sippable dessert features cubes of fresh apricot and peach frozen in peach nectar before being dropped into glasses of chilled Sauternes. The dessert wine is an unexpected but excellent match for the fresh astringency of the fruits.
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Apricot-Strawberry Galette
The combination of summer's strawberries with bright apricots is tantalizing and artful thanks to the galette's rustic folds and open-center reveal. It doesn't hurt that it is very simple to make, or that it's incredibly delicious.
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Broiled Apricots with Fresh Ricotta and Pistachios
When in doubt, broil: The caramelizing heat and a dusting of sugar draw out the best qualities of slightly under-ripe apricots and make for a very pretty plateful that can double as an appetizer or dessert.
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Vanilla Panna Cotta with Poached Apricots
Gently poached apricots turn meltingly soft and offer subtle tartness atop a pillow of smooth panna cotta.
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Apricot-Cheesecake Bars
Tantalizing swirls of pure apricot purée are dragged gently through the cream cheese filling of these irresistible Graham Cracker bars.
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Apricot Chiffon Pie
Brimming with almost two pounds of apricots, puréed and strained to cloud-like softness, this chiffon pie sings of long summer evenings.
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Cardamom-Scented Peach-Apricot Cobblers
Combine the brightness of peaches with apricots in these individual cobblers where cardamom and allspice provide complexity and comfort.
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Apricot-and-Cream Cheese Squares
These sheet pan squares combine all the drama of a Danish (minus the crazy pastry-work) with the allure of hearty focaccia. The squares are cut so that every serving boasts a perfect apricot-half atop the yeasted dough.
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Puff-Pastry Tarts with Stone Fruits and Frangipane
In these hand-size tartlets the delectable marzipan flavor of frangipane is kept in check by the acid of cooked stone fruits on a buttery crust of puff pastry.
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Rustic Cherry-Apricot Tart
With a filling that is heavy on apricots, and light on wine-dark cherries, this free-form tart is given welcome crunch by cornmeal in the crust.
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Chamomile-Caramel Sundaes with Stone Fruits
The sharpness of cooked juices in the stone fruit topping makes a quintessential summer sundae even better. Infusing the cream topping with calming chamomile adds gentle complexity to the traditional topping.
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Broiled Apricots with Ginger Whipped Cream
Sometimes the most memorable fruit desserts are the simplest: Ripe apricots are dusted with sugar and cardamom before being broiled and topped with heavy cream cleverly spiked with warming ginger juice.