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Grandma Pinky’s Apricot Nut Rolls

Dough:

4 C. flour

1 C. sugar

1 t salt

6 t (heaping) baking powder

2 sticks of melted (not softened, MELTED!) margarine. (again, no butter!)

Do not use a dough hook on a kitchenaid. This will make the dough too tough – I’m still being tsk’d by my grandmother that I did this. Do this in a big bowl, by hand, and do not do any other way. Grandma will point and tsk you too!

Then add 2 large eggs, 1 cup of milk slowly until the dough forms up – it shouldn’t be sticky.

Icing:

In a bowl, Take 1 bag of confectioner’s sugar. Stir milk into this until you get a cinnamon-roll-icing like paste.

Nut filling:

Using a food processor (don’t ask me how grandma did it, this is strong armed stuff!) Grind one bag (1 pound) of walnuts into a paste. Add a “handful” of sugar. Mix whole milk in “splurts” to make this into a thicker paste. You’re looking for a mealy version of peanut butter without being greasy.

Apricot filling:

Take 2 bags of dried apricots. In a small saucepan on the stove on medium-low heat, add the apricots and just enough water to cover. Boil them until they rehydrate. Take a stick blender (or in a food processor or blender) and blend until they are jam like with “pieces”…like a marmalade or jam.

Assembly:

Make the dough into about 6 balls. With a rolling pin on a floured surface, roll each into a square and about 1/6” thin. On the bottom third, spread the apricot.

 

 

Fold down the bottom 2/3rds down over to cover the apricot.

 

On this newly formed canvas of dough spread some nut filing.

 

 

Fold the bottom half with no filling over top.

 

So the side view, should be like this 

 

 

Cut the final piece like a jelly roll.

 

 

Take the piece that you’ve cut. Take the top and turn it so that you make like a “Bowtie” out of each one. A bit of filling will ooze out…this is OK!

Place these on a greased cookie sheet and bake until they are done.

Take this finished cookie and dip it in your icing and then coat it with a nice bowl of plain ground walnuts (not the same as the filling).

These are my grandmother’s Apricot Nut Roll Cookies. They take time and energy to turn out. They are not overly sweet, they taste like “home” to me in a cookie. She had to go to us and teach us how to make them. Even at 91 years of age, last year!, she made these for us. I can tell you to cook them at 400, but you cannot understand how much I mean it when you just have to wait until they are, in her words, “done and brown.”…it won’t take long, keep checking back every few minutes or so. My mother once asked how long they cooked, my grandmother said, “Until they’re brown, ain’t you got no oven light?”…so there. “til brown”