Apricot Walnut Spoon Sweet
Dried apricots simmered down with sugar and walnuts into a thick jam you eat off a spoon.
- calories
- 420
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 120
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 17 min
- water
- 200 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- Snack
- Canister stove
- Campfire coals
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Dairy free
- Gluten free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dried apricots | 1 cup | halved with scissors at home |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 1/2 cup | |
| Walnut halves | 1/3 cup | |
| Lemon juice | 1 tsp | from a squeeze bottle, or a pinch of citric acid |
| Salt | a pinch |
Method
- Put the apricots in the pot with 200 ml of water. Bring it to a boil and hold it there for five minutes until the fruit swells and goes soft.
- Add the sugar and stir until it dissolves. Drop the heat to a bare simmer.
- Cook ten more minutes, stirring often. It will thicken and go glossy. Scrape the bottom or the sugar will scorch.
- Stir in the walnuts, lemon juice, and salt. Pull it off the heat.
- Let it sit five minutes. It thickens further as it cools. Eat it warm with a spoon, or spread it on whatever bread you are carrying.
The original is a Romanian preserve: fresh apricots and walnut kernels boiled with sugar until they candy, then sealed in jars for winter. Fresh apricots do not travel, and canning in the backcountry is not a thing, so this version starts from dried fruit and skips the jar. The apricots rehydrate in the first boil and the sugar syrup forms around them, which gets you to roughly the same place in fifteen minutes.
Sugar is doing structural work here, not just sweetening. Too little and you get stewed fruit in water; the half cup is what turns the liquid into syrup thick enough to cling. The walnuts go in at the end on purpose. Simmer them and they turn soft and slightly bitter, and the point of them is the crunch against the fruit.
Packing
Apricots and sugar in one bag, walnuts in another so they stay crisp until the end. Lemon juice in a dropper bottle.
Variations
- Push a walnut half into each apricot before cooking if you want them to hold their shape.
- Cut the sugar to 1/3 cup and eat it as a breakfast compote over oats.
- A split cardamom pod or a strip of dried orange peel in the simmer changes the whole thing.
https://savoriurbane.com/dulceata-de-caise-cu-miez-de-nuca-reteta-veche-caise-confiate