Baked Apricots Stuffed with Almond Paste

Since the beginning of May, the weather in SA is getting hotter day by day. On some days, the temperature almost reaches 45 degree Celcius! Needless to say, it is quite impossible to stay outdoor under such sweltering heat for too long, and even if we need to go out for groceries shopping, we can only do so at night.

As I reluctantly welcome the arrival of summer, I stuff myself silly with stone fruits at the same time! After staying in South East Asia for all my life, where the only stone fruits we can get are imported and usually tasted quite bland, I can't help but stock up the extremely sweet and juicy stone fruits whenever I go to the market. They are not only delicious, but very cheap too! I bought one and a half kilogram of apricots recently and it only costs SGD3 (USD2).

With such a big bag of apricots in the kitchen, I started to pore over my cookbooks for recipes and for that few days, I've been trying out different dishes using apricots. I even tried to create a braised chicken dish with apricots but unfortunately it did not turn out as good as I wanted it to be. I'm quite satisfied with the other dishes though, and one of them is baked apricots stuffed with almond paste, recipe is shown below!

Baked Apricots Stuffed with Almond Paste Recipe
Adapted from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

Ingredients:
13 ripe but firm apricots
1 cup almond meal
1/2 cup castor sugar
3 tablespoon rose water

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 350 deg F.
2) Cut apricots into halves, remove the pits and set aside.
3) Mix almond meal, sugar and rose water in a medium bowl until it forms clumps.
4) Take lumps the size of a small walnut and stuff into the apricot slits. Press the apricot to squeeze the filling gently.
5) Arrange the stuffed apricot halves on a baking tray, bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until the apricots have softened a little. Keep an eye on them and remove from oven if they start to fall apart.
6) Drizzle some honey on the baked apricots, serve hot or cold.