I was very excited when my Baking with Julia book arrived!
And in plenty of time to join in on this week’s recipe scheduled for Tuesdays with Dorie!

I planned to enjoy making this recipe.
I set aside the last weekend of summer to take my time and play in the kitchen.
And this recipe fit the bill perfectly as it could be stretched over a couple of days.
No rush.

I made the dough and placed it into the fridge.
I had a two days up my sleeve until I had to cook it, so how easy was step 1!

In fact, it was so easy and stress free I decided to start on the prune lekvar.
(The prune lekvar is made with walnuts while the apricot lekvar has almonds. Two of my children are allergic to almonds while only one is allergic to walnuts, so prune lekvar it was!)
Harm minimisation!

We went on to have a great weekend at the beach with the kayak and the kid’s various boards.
Relaxing and leisurely!

It’s amazing what kids can do with boards when there are absolutely no waves around!
Creativity can be expressed in so many ways!

It was great knowing that whenever I was ready, my dough and lekvar were there, waiting for me.
No pressure.
And breaking the steps up like this, made what initially looked like a daunting recipe, into something manageable.
Easy even!

Processing the nuts, cinnamon and sugar was where I seemed to fall apart…
My food processor was sealed but somehow I ended up with a fair amount of this nut dust all over the kitchen.
It was a deliciously nutty, sugary, cinnamon-y mixture.

Unless you’re somewhat allergic to nuts!
Then it’s just a nerve wracking experience with kids coughing and complaining of heavy chests.

I used a mixture of hazelnuts, walnuts and pecan (the least allergic of all the nuts to our family).
But I guess with 3 kids, all allergic to various degrees to different combinations of nuts, it was going to be disastrous to some degree!

So after dosing kids up on antihistamines, I decided to skip the dried fruit and finish as quickly as possible!

I loved these!
I’m kind of glad I skipped the dried fruit.
I could really taste the prune butter and it was balanced beautifully with the nuts. Any more dried fruit and I think it would have been too sweet for my taste.

Granted, they’re not the prettiest looking things, but I loved these.
You can find the full recipe at Jessica of My Baking Heart and  Margaret of The Urban Hiker blogs. Our hosts for this week!

To see what others thought of this recipe head over to Tuesdays with Dorie and check them out!