National Apricot Day

Cakes, cakes, cakes, I love making cakes! During 2006, I went crazy making homemade layer cakes for every event I hosted and all of the holidays in between. To me, making a cake is an enjoyable process and once you understand the basic technique, the flavor possibilities are endless! Many cakes are done by the classic creaming technique. You cream together the sugar and butter, add eggs and then alternate between both a wet and a dry mixture. The dry mixture contains flour, baking soda, etc. and the wet mixture is vanilla, buttermilk, etc. Once all of this is combined, extras can be added (chocolate, etc.) and voila! you have cake batter. Since today is National Apricot Day, I found a cake recipe that has an apricot marmalade filling. read more

Although I love a great dry vodka martini, sometimes what a girl wants is a light fruity drink with just a touch of alcohol. When craving a drink of these sorts, I suggest the recipe for the following drink: an apricot fizz. The sweet apricot brandy blends nicely with the fresh citrus juice of both a lime and an orange. To celebrate National Apricot Day with a great apricot fizz, read more

Although apricots grown in California and Washington are not available until May or June, today is National Apricot Day. Interesting how a fruit can be celebrated nationally when it's not even in season. You can, however, get apricots imported from Chile and New Zealand, but I prefer eating fruit when it's in season locally, rather than fruit that was picked unripe and transported hundreds of miles to my neighborhood super market. Luckily, dried apricots are always in season and today I plan on incorporating them into a batch of homemade granola. I love having granola on hand in the winter for a quick breakfast or for an easy snack. Dried fruits, especially apricots, make the granola sweet and healthy. Got an awesome recipe with dried apricots among its ingredients? Add it to the recipe database. To check out my recipe for granola with dried apricots, read more