I may be coming late to this party but I am singing the praises of Red Velvet Apricots! When you have a soggy Seattle spring, you can get tired of winter citrus. Farmers announced today that local berry season has been delayed another two weeks and I was CRAVING fresh fruit. I had tried a few regular apricots a couple of days ago but they were hard. Even though they looked golden, the flavor was green, green, GREEN. Green may be my favorite color, but not when it comes to apricots. So, I decided to try a bold red instead!
At the Ballard Market, the Red Velvet Apricots immediately caught my eye. From across the aisle they looked like baby red potatoes and I wondered what potatoes were doing in the fruit section. Intrigued, I ventured closer until I could see the Red Velvet Apricot sign. I picked one up and the fuzzy skinned fruit felt plush and gave a bit. “What! A ripe Apricot in May?” The 4.95 per pound price tag made me hesitate but my intense fruit craving shoved reason aside and I bought four as a treat.
Red Velvet Apricot
If you want to see better pictures of this fruit, you will want to check out Foodie Hunter’s post on Red Velvet Apricots. After the first two, I was so enamored with the Red Velvet Apricot, I decided I had to share my latest love affair on the blog. I took a couple of pictures of the remaining two before I succumbed to their allure and gave up on the perfect photo.
The Red Velvet Apricot is actually a plum-apricot hybrid but it is almost always referred to as an apricot instead of plumcot. There are three types of plum-apricot hybrid:
- Aprium – 75% Apricot and 25% Plum
- Plumcot – 50% Apricot and 50% Plum
- Pluot – 25% Apricot and 75% Plum
Pluots are the most readily available but don’t pass up the plumcots if you can find them. Plumcots are juicy, but not as juicy as pluots where the juice runs down your chin. The texture is much more apricot than plum. It has a meaty texture with sweet-tart flavor that brightened up my rainy spring evening. The skin is tart and provides a pleasing contrast to the sweet and juicy flesh. In three out of four of the apricots, the flesh clung to the pit like a cling peach and in the fourth, the flesh separated from the pit like most apricots. I have been reading that the sweetness increases with cooking but mine are already gone. If you can hold on to your Red Velvet Apricots long enough, you might want to try this apricot cherry upside down cake recipe from Eating out Loud.
Red Velvet Apricots have a very short season, so if you see them grab them before they are gone! This stone fruit ripens before most other apricots, ripening in late spring through early summer, usually April through June.
Red Velvet Apricot
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