In the height of summer, when fruit is bountiful and hours spent outdoors are at an all-time high, making quick and simple desserts should be the priority. Having a staple recipe that you can recreate over and over, swapping in and out ingredients depending on your mood and the season, is the ticket.
To my mind, fruit galettes are the perfect go-to recipe. Relatively simple to whip up, they welcome nearly any combination of fruits and flavors so that while the basics stay the same, there's variation enough that no one, including the baker, ever gets bored. A few weeks ago I found a new favorite version, the Berry and Apricot Galette with Saffron from Apt. 2B Baking Co.'s Yossy Arefi.
Photos by Yossy Arefi.
Above: Fresh apricots, halved.
Yossy, who recently took us on a foraging adventure in rural New Jersey, is a food photographer and stylist as well as an accomplished baker. She makes her home in a humble Brooklyn apartment where she churns out sweet confections for her recipe blog, Apt. 2B Baking Co. While Yossy works professionally with a digital SLR, she reserves her blog as a space to showcase work produced with her collection of vintage film cameras.
Above: Apricots and berries tossed in sugar scented with vanilla bean and saffron.
I love the rustic appeal of Yossy's galettes captured on film: hand-shaped crust and a medley of apricot and berries make a dessert that's beautiful but doesn't require an undue amount of fussing. The addition of saffron makes it extra special, without becoming too precious.
Above: I tend to use simple unbleached white flour crusts when making my own galettes, but the golden hues of Yossy's rye crust is making me change my ways.
For the full recipe, see Berry and Apricot Galettes with Saffron.
For more from Yossy, see Foraging for Dessert.