Let me state the obvious right away because I know what you’re thinking: What am I doing here? Shouldn’t I be packing for our move that’s less than 24 hours away? These are all valid questions but you can see there’s a long history of procrastination in the kitchen here. Two days before our last move I sliced pasta and peeled kale. I spent the last week of my pregnancy stocking the freezer with food to bribe the midwives. When I was done with that I baked a cake for the people who were coming to visit the new baby. As my induction was progressing agonizingly slowly I grabbed my laptop and wrote down a new recipe I’d made the days before. So you won’t be surprised that on Tuesday I made the argument with a straight face by turning the last of the whipped cream a handful of chocolate chips and a pint of vanilla ice cream I had left over into hot chocolate sauce that I was “packing.” But yesterday I didn’t even have an excuse; I just needed a break from the annoying conversations with a store that had lost the mattress we ordered and that could maybe get us a replacement sometime in September ah.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 Buttermilk Pantry | 2019-12-11 06:19:20 |  10,382 Views |
Pistachio-Apricot Slice
Ahem. I was a little confused about Red Jacket Orchards apricots this summer. I shared a picture of them the other day and someone asked me what I was going to make with them and I was confused. Make? With apricots? Why on earth would you make something with apricots when you can eat four of them in a row like my son did before I dropped open-mouthed yesterday? But then came the next wave of procrastination and why yes making something with apricots was a brilliant idea!
At another time in my life this would have been a pie. I would have made a pie crust and pressed it into a fluted removable-bottom pie pan trimmed the top poked holes all over it with a fork filled it with pie weights and half-baked it before elegantly filling it. This all feels far too fussy for my current lifestyle—and by “lifestyle” I mean “barely controlled chaos”—so I made cookies instead. Cookies are your friend. The crust can be whirred up in a food processor and pressed into the crust. You half-bake it without the presses or pie weights and while it’s in the oven you use the bowl of your food processor that you didn’t even wash (because la dee da it doesn’t matter) to whiz up the pistachio frangipane filling.
Frangipane is usually made with almonds; frangipane is delicious with almonds. But what I really want to eat with apricots is green pistachios so I made a pistachio spread instead. Since the sole purpose of this baked good was to keep me from addressing the real things in my life that needed to be addressed and I was very distracted while baking my expectations for the outcome were very low. I figured this would be a disaster and that I would make it up to you someday preferably in my new kitchen. But the kitchen fairies were with me — it’s like they wanted me to deliberately ignore my to-do list! And who am I to argue with fairies?! — and these are actually deliciously buttery and rich but not too sweet. For a cookie they’re downright elegant. As a way to dodge a big looming deadline surprisingly effective. Now who wants to come over and help us pack?
