Instructions: 1. Preheat oven to 350F/180C.

2. Chop dried apricots. The easiest way to do this is to cut them with scissors. Place apricot pieces in a bowl and cover with the boiling water.

Allow them to rest for 10 minutes while preparing the batter.

3. Combine the flour, baking powder, dry milk powder, and sugar. Stir together well.

4. Combine the egg, egg whites, milk, melted butter and extracts. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and stir only until blended.

5. Drain the apricots and pat dry with paper towels. Stir them into the batter. Spoon the mixture into a buttered 8-inch x 4-inch/1.5-L loaf pan.

Sprinkle chopped almonds on top and press lightly into batter.

6. Bake for 1 hour. Allow the loaf to rest in the pan for 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool.

Makes one 9-in x 5-in/2 L loaf. (exceeds size of pan?)

You have 2 choices for this recipe:
1. You can keep in the 1/3 cup butter, but eliminate the nonfat dry milk.

2. Or, you can make a puree of apricots and dates or just dried apricots.

Just add enough warm water to make it very thick paste-add 1 TBSP of water at a time until you get a nice thick puree-like a very thick applesauce.

The reason that I did an apricot/date puree combo was to show you that you could use any dried fruit combo-the apricots will lend a lot of needed apricot flavor to this recipe. Once you remove the fat, the flavor goes, so I wanted to put flavor back in.

You can do 1/2 apricots and 1/2 dates, or 100 % apricots, or 100% dates. I would use 100 % dried apricot puree. Lighter Bake has applesauce in it, so I know that you cannot have it.

On second thought, I would eliminate the dried milk powder entirely, whether you use butter or fruit puree. I would also use all dried apricots for the puree.

You can also substitute the 3/4 cup chopped apricots with 3/4 cup currants or use 1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries.

NOTES : "This recipe is so easy and fast that its hard to believe it can be so delicious" according to Bonnie Stern (her comment about the original version of the recipe).

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