APRICOT PIE FILLING {Recipe}

We live in Las Vegas AND we grow fruit!!  Yes, its true.  A lot of people think you can’t grow anything in Las Vegas.  But, you can!  You can grow a ton of different vegetables and fruits.  We have an apricot tree and this was the week of harvest for it.  Well, I guess we started last week and finished this week.  We didn’t get to it quite soon enough and therefore lost a lot of the fruit to pesky birds.  But we did get about 5 cookie sheets of apricots.  So, I have frantically been trying to figure out how to use them all up because we just can’t seem to eat them fast enough.  Apricots get overripe very quickly.  But there is just nothing quite so yummy as a perfectly ripe homegrown apricot.  Store bought apricots are never very good.  So, even though dealing with the fruit can be a headache, I do love the tree and I’m glad we have it!

Here is one of the trays:

I decided to use some of them to make some apricot pie filling to freeze for the holidays.  I made an apricot pie last Thanksgiving but I believe I made it out of apricots that I had frozen, not filling I had frozen.  It was tasty but if I remember correctly it was a bit watery.  I am hoping making the filling now and freezing it will help the texture to be a bit firmer. 

Here is how I did it:

Wash all the fruit well and remove the pits.

Cut each half in half again lengthwise and place in a bowl.

Add lemon juice, sugar and quick cooking tapioca.

Stir well.

Place in pie plates, cover with foil, and freeze.  Once frozen, remove from plates and vacuum seal into bags.  If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, wrap them well in foil and then place in freezer zipper bags.  Use a straw to suck out as much air as possible before closing the bag completely.

Here is what it will look like when I go to bake it:

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And hopefully it will turn out looking something like this come Thanksgiving:

You can find the recipe I used for the filling HERE on Taste of Home.  I will probably top mine with a lattice crust although the crumb crust is yummy too!