Baking with Dried Fruit

If you’re in need of a little taste of sweet fruit this winter, these dried fruit recipes are just for you. Dried fruits are the preserved gems of baking, letting you serve desserts that pack the concentrated sweetness of your favorite fruits all year long. 

1. Apricot Sweet Buns 

Once a precious commodity traded on the Silk Road, jewel-hued dried apricots offer a chance to enjoy the delicately tart fruit after their notoriously short season has come and gone. We use dried apricots as the sweet golden filling of our almond-flecked sweet buns and top them off with a sticky drizzle of Brown Sugar Glaze.

2. Scottish Fruit Slice Bars

Traditional Scottish Fruit Slice is a combination of jammy dried fruit with a crumbly shortbread crust that’s reminiscent of the more familiar British mincemeat pie. (Get our January/February 2018 British issue for a Mincemeat Pasty recipe!) In our spirited take on the original fruit slice recipe, we added a generous splash of Scotch whiskey to the filling. 

3. Juniper, Pear, and Blueberry Breton Tarts

According to Thanksgiving lore, one of the many skills taught to the struggling Pilgrims by the Wampanoag was the process of drying blueberries in the summer sun to later be enjoyed during the hard New England winters. For our ode to blueberries, we paired slivers of dried pears with a dried blueberry, lemon, and gin-flavored filling.

4. Date and Hazelnut Caramel Cake

For this modern take on caramel cake, we simmer dates, water, and Frangelico into a rich, nutty Date Caramel to create a decadent base for the frosting.