With grateful thanks to our Good Housekeeping cookery book – subtitled the cook’s classic companion – and well worth seeking out if you’re looking for a comprehensive guide to traditional recipes.
For the shortcake:
- 175g self raising flour
- half teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 75g unsalted butter – softened
- 50g granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
For the filling:
- 100g broken walnuts
- 100g granulated sugar
- 1 large egg white
- 410g can of apricot halves in juice (or you can use fresh apricots, stoned and halved, poached briefly in water with a bit of sugar and lemon juice added)
Grease a shallow 8 inch (20cm) round springform tin. Put the flour and cinnamon in a food processor and add the butter. Blitz until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and the egg and mix to a soft dough.
Turn the dough into the greased tin and smooth it out evenly. You could use the back of a spoon to do this, or your fingers.
Now start the filling. Put the walnuts in the food processor with the sugar and blitz until it’s all finely ground. Then add the egg white and blend it to a soft paste. Spread this mixture over the shortcake base and leave a 1cm-ish gap to the edge.
Drain the apricots well. Arrange them with the cut side down over the filling. Bake at 180 degrees C for about 30 minutes, until the filling has risen between the apricot halves and is looking set and slightly browned.
You can glaze the shortcake with some sieved apricot jam mixed with the juice drained from the fruit, heated in a pan until it goes syrupy (about 3 minutes).
For a bit of variation you could use ground almonds instead of walnuts, and you can also use plums instead of apricots.
Our family recipes 