Apricots

Note to self: do not leave a bowl of nearly-ripe apricots out of the fridge when going away for a few days and it’s going to get quite hot.

I lost about half the apricots a neighbour gave us, which was sad. With the remainder, I decided to experiment with making apricot spoon sweets, although because of said disaster I halved the recipe (a kilo of apricots is quite a lot). I got the recipe from Kate’s Salt Sugar Smoke, which is a remarkable book of beauty (there are lots of variations online).

Making the sugar syrup and putting the apricots in for the first day was all very easy. The second day required a sugar thermometer. I acquired a sugar thermometer. I started boiling the sugar syrup. The thermometer would not attach to the side of the saucepan in a way that was useful, partly because there wasn’t enough syrup for it to reach. So I was boiling this syrup with the saucepan on an angle, so the tip of the thermometer could reach. This went on for some time. The recipe said it needed to reach 230F (my photo of the recipe cut off the C; lucky thermometers cater to old-fashioned Americans). Waiting… waiting… not reaching that temp… still waiting… bored… eh, I give up. How much difference will ~8F make, anyway?

Turns out, a bit. The recipe indicated that the syrup would cling to the apricots and be really quite thick. Yeh, not so much. It was still what I would describe as runny. Apparently I am a cowboy.

Result: two jars of apricots in a sugar syrup that I’m sure will still be tasty, even though not as stickily delightful as intended. Don’t know how I’ll use them yet…

Result, accidental: acknowledgement that I need to actually pay attention to recipes when baking.