Apricot Cherry Galette

Our young cherry tree just finished it’s work (above) so we had to make one of our favorite summer recipes—an apricot and cherry galette. The rough, non-fussy shape of the dough is somehow perfect. We’ve tried a lot of recipes, but our favorite is from Bon Appetit. The original recipe is in the link, but John made some changes in the instructions below that he found helpful to get the dough right.

This pretty tart is great with vanilla ice cream.

CRUST
1 cup all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon sugar
Pinch of salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick, 85g) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 1/2 tablespoons (about) ice water
FILLING
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 teaspoons plus 4 1/2 tablespoons sugar
8 large apricots, halved, pitted
1 cup pitted cherries (about 6 ounces) or frozen, thawed
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted, cooled
Vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt

FOR CRUST: Stir flour, 1/8 teaspoon sugar and salt in bowl to blend. Add butter; cut the butter up with a pastry cutter/blender tool (or with a couple of knives) until coarse meal forms. Mix in enough water by tablespoons, while stirring until a few loose clumps form. At this point it’s just flour and loose clumps of butter and water. It looks like it would never form into dough. Ignore that. Gather into ball with your hands; flatten into 3/4-1” thick disk. That simple pressing together transforms it into a pie or tart dough—and, as a disk, it’s actually partially rolled out. Wrap in plastic; chill at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.
Preheat oven to 400°F. Line baking sheet with parchment. Roll out dough on floured surface to a rough 11-inch round. Transfer to prepared baking sheet.

FOR FILLING: Mix flour and 2 teaspoons sugar in bowl. Sprinkle over crust, leaving 1 1/2-inch border. Place apricots cut side down on crust, placing close together and leaving 1-1/2 inch border at outer edge. Scatter cherries over apricots. Top with 4 tablespoons sugar. Fold pastry edges up around apricots, pressing against apricots to form scalloped border. Brush crust with butter; sprinkle with 1/2 tablespoon sugar.
Bake until crust is golden and fruit is tender (some juices from fruit will leak onto parchment), about 1 hour. Remove from oven. Using pastry brush, brush tart with juices on parchment. Gently slide parchment with tart onto rack. Carefully run long knife under tart to loosen (crust is fragile). Cool on parchment until lukewarm. Slide 9-inch-diameter tart pan bottom under tart, then place tart on platter. A pizza peel (very large spatula) is also a handy way to move the tart to a serving platter. Serve slightly warm or room temperature with ice cream.

Serves 6.

Bon Appétit
June 1995