It’s like biting into a piece of a cool and light summer morning, before the sun has had time to heat up the surroundings and scramble its crystal clarity. Or with less imagery, it’s like a munching on a thick, crumbly, crunchy cookie topped with fruit jam and big pieces of juicy fruit, except that this fruit-topped crunchy cookie is as big as a pie !

How big ? The almond enhanced shortbread crust is 20 cm wide, 1 cm thick with a thicker 1,5 cm edge ! The crust is crispy, yet crumbly and doesn’t get soggy, even after a few days in the fridge. The juicy apricots are quartered, marinated and strained, because the juice that they release will become the syrupy jelly that coats and bathes everything, fruit slices as well as almonds, whether powdered or slivered. The crust doesn’t get soggy and is still firm, even 4 days later, because of the layer of almond powder between the apricots and the crust … Yes, I’m quite proud of this.

You can obviously prepare it in a regular baking dish but I wanted to test it out by using my straight-sided deep eating plates, just because I don’t like the fluting and sloping edges of pie dishes, but that’s just me. And since plates come in different sizes, I used a smaller plate inside a larger plate to create the relatively flat crust shell with a low raised edge.

I was surprised how tasty it was, both sweet and tart, both juicy and crunchy and of course how good it looked too.

And I only used 7 ingredients, which is rare for me !

It would be a shame not to try it out … :)