Chocolate-Dipped Apricots
Apricot halves baked in orange juice, with a piece of chocolate in the hollow and a cap of meringue on top. Five ingredients, two spells in the oven and a dessert that looks like it came from a pastry shop.
The order is the whole trick: the apricots go into the oven on their own first, so they soften and draw out their juice. Only then the chocolate and the meringue, for five short minutes. Everything together from the start, and the meringue would be brown before the fruit was cooked.
Ingredients
- 6 apricots, halved and stoned
- Juice of 1/2 small orange
- 1 egg white
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 40 g chocolate, in 12 pieces
Method
- 1
Heat the oven to 180 °C.
- 2
Put the apricot halves on a tray, drizzle with the orange juice and bake for 5-8 minutes.
- 3
Whip the egg white to stiff peaks and rain in the sugar.
- 4
Carry on whipping for another 2 minutes, until the meringue is thick and glossy.
- 5
Put the meringue into a piping bag.
- 6
Set a piece of chocolate in each apricot half.
- 7
Pipe the meringue on and bake for another 5 minutes, until it takes colour on top. Serve warm, while the chocolate is still molten.