Not too long ago, I put out the word that I wanted the recipes or the favorite foods that everyone remembered growing up. My husband’s brother Jon asked if I had the recipe for his mom’s Apricot
jam and he remembered it having pineapple and walnuts in it.
I didn’t have the original recipe, but this one I am making to give to him to see how close it is to his memory. I remember Jacque did like her jam with a few nuts, a conserve.
Ingredients
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3 cups apricots ; pitted and chopped
20 ounces crushed pineapple in juice
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 package pectin
1/2 teaspoon butter
8 cups sugar
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
Method:
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Measure apricots into 6-8 qt. saucepot.
Add pineapple and lemon juice.
Stir pectin into fruit mixture.
Bring mixture to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly.
Add butter.
Stir in sugar quickly.
Bring back to a rolling boil and boil exactly 4 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat.
Add 1/8 cup walnuts to each jar.
Ladle hot jam mixture into prepared jars, filling to within 1/8 inch of tops.
Wipe jar rims and threads.
Cover with two piece lids. Screw bands tightly.
Invert onto a clean towel.
After 5 minutes, turn upright, check for seals.
Makes about 9 cups of jam.
So what could my mom do with her canned peaches? Everything or nothing, they were always great. This tart is equally good with tart apples, pears, plums, or berries, apricots or yes – peaches.  Even combining fruits would be great.  The crust has an appealing cookie-like texture. The almond cream  was amazingly smooth and flavorful. Almond flavor is always good with fruit. They combine well, and enhance each other.  I did add both rum and vanilla to flavor it. I like food to look beautiful, but not fussed over, so rustic always is more appealing to me.  Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours Dorie Greenspan, but I am sure my Mother had a similar recipe.
For the almond cream:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup ground blanched almonds
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 large egg
2 teaspoons dark rum
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 partially-baked 9-inch tart shell, made with Sweet Tart Dough (see below), at room temperature
1 can of canned peach halves
Confectioners’ sugar for dusting, or apple jelly for glazing
To make the almond cream: Put the butter and sugar in the workbowl of a food processor and process until the mixture is smooth and satiny. Add the ground almonds and continue to process until well blended. Add the flour and cornstarch, process, and then add the egg. Process for about 15 seconds more, or until the almond cream is homogeneous. Add the rum or vanilla and process just to blend. If you prefer, you can make the cream in a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or in a bowl with a rubber spatula. In either case, the ingredients are added in the same order. Scrape the almond cream into a container and either use it immediately or refrigerate it until firm, about 2 hours.
Getting ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Have a lined baking sheet at the ready. Cut the peaches in half from blossom to stem (or pieces). Whatever fruit you have, make sure to pat them dry – really dry – so that their liquid won’t keep the almond cream from baking.
Fill the baked crust with the almond cream, spreading it even with an offset metal icing spatula. Thinly slice each pear half crosswise, lift each half on a spatula, press down on the pear to fan it slightly and place it, wide-end toward the edge of the crust, over the almond cream. The halves will form spokes.
Put the crust on the lined baking sheet, slide the sheet into the oven and bake the tart 50 to 60 minutes, or until the almond cream puffs up around the pears and browns. Transfer the tart to a rack to cool to just warm or to room temperature before unmolding.
Right before serving, dust the tart with confectioners’ sugar. If you prefer, prepare a glaze by bringing about 1/4 cup apple jelly and1/2 teaspoon water to the boil. Brush the glaze over the surface of the tart.
Serving:Â This tart goes very well with aromatic tea.
Storing: If it’s convenient for you, you can make the almond cream up to 2 days ahead and keep it closely covered in the refrigerator, or you can wrap it airtight and freeze it for up to 2 months; defrost before using. You can also poach the pears up to 1 day ahead. However, once you’ve baked the tart, you should be prepared to enjoy it that same day.
Playing around: The almond cream is a great companion for a variety of fruits. It’s as good with summer fruits, like apricots or peaches, as it is with autumn’s apples.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (4 1/2 ounces) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk
To make the dough: Put the flour, confectioners’ sugar and salt in the workbowl of a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is cut in coarsely – you’ll have pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pea-size pieces and that’s just fine. Stir the egg, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses – about 10 seconds each – until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before your reaches this clumpy stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change – heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface.
Very lightly and sparingly – make that very, very lightly and sparingly – knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.
If you want to press the dough into a tart pan, now is the time to do it.
If you want to chill the dough and roll it out later (doable, but fussier than pressing), gather the dough into a ball (you might have to use a little more pressure than you used to mix in dry bits, because you do want the ball to be just this side of cohesive), flatten it into a disk, wrap it well and chill it for at least 2 hours or for up to 1 day.
To make a press-in crust: Butter the tart pan and press the dough evenly along the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Don’t be stingy – you want a crust with a little heft because you want to be able to both taste and feel it. Also, don’t be too heavy-handed – you want to press the crust in so that the pieces cling to one another and knit together when baked, but you don’t want to press so hard that the crust loses its crumbly shortbreadish texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.
To make a rolled-out crust: This dough is very soft – a combination of a substantial amount of butter and the use of confectioners’ sugar – so I find it is easier to roll it between wax paper or plastic wrap or, easiest of all, in a roll-out-your-dough slipcover. If you use the slipcover, flour it lightly. Roll the dough out evenly, turning the dough over frequently and lifting the wax paper or plastic wrap often, so that it doesn’t roll into the dough and form creases. If you’ve got time, slide the rolled out dough into the fridge to rest and firm for about 20 minutes before fitting the dough into the buttered tart pan. Trim the excess dough even with the edge of the pan. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.
To partially bake the crust: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil tightly against the crust. Bake the crust 25 minutes, then carefully remove the foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. Bake for another 3 to 5 minutes, then transfer the crust to a cooling rack; keep it in its pan.
Add blanched and peeled apricot kernels to each jar before sealing. How many? I’m not sure. I put up half-pint jars with 3, 4, 5 and 6 kernels per jar.
Fruit-to-sugar ratio by volume 3:2
Fruit-to-sugar ratio by weight 5:4
4.5 lbs (2 kg) pitted and halved Blenheim apricots or 12 cups loosely packed 3.5 lbs (1.6 kg) granulated sugar or 8 cups 2 small lemons
1 Place prepared fruit in a ceramic bowl, add lemon juice and sugar. Cover with wax paper and macerate for several hours in the refrigerator.
2 Transfer mixture to a heavy enameled pot and slowly bring to a full boil.
3 Lower heat to a controlled boil, skim and continue to cook, stirring occasionally until mixture begins to reduce and thicken, and the apricot halves begin to break down. Check for a jell set at 20 minutes—I went to about 22 minutes with this batch, which should give me a luscious consistency that will mound in a spoon but slowly drip through the tines of a fork.
4 Once the jam is sufficiently reduced, ladle into jars and seal. I processed the jars in a hot-water bath for 10 minutes, as suggested by Ball.
4.5 lbs apricots yielded a scant 6 pints of jam 1 x pint jar 5 x 8 oz jars 5 x 4 oz jars plus a few ounces set aside for breakfast.
 Dorie Greenspan, but I am sure my Mother had a similar recipe.
