With a name like that, I wish I could tell you these tarts were the new magic diet food.

If only I could hunker down with one all to myself and become instantly slim.

I wish!

“Slim Apricot Tarts” are majestic with fresh summer apricots. And fruit does a body good, doesn’t it?

Oh sure, the fruit does sit on a platform of buttery puff pastry. And the apricots do get brushed with sweet apricot jam before serving.

But it’s all good, isn’t it?

It sure tastes that way. The apricots are first par-boiled to get them squishy soft. You remove the pits and peel off the skins (throw them away or nosh on them as you toil away at this task). Then, you place them atop the puff pastry dough to bake.

The recipe is from “Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard” (Ten Speed Press), of which I recently received a review copy. The book is by the wonderful British food writer, Nigel Slater. If you have never experienced his elegant, evocative, winning prose — especially in books like my favorite “Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger” (Gotham) — you are truly missing out.

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Chef Seamus Mullen was working grueling hours just after opening his Boqueria restaurant in New York, when he woke up one night with hip pain so agonizing that he had to dial 911.

The then 32-year-old chef spent the next three days hospitalized, with doctors running every test conceivable until they discovered the cause: rheumatoid arthritis.

The auto-immune disease causes the body to produce too many white blood cells and attack itself, causing painful and debilitating inflammation.

For a chef who works long hours on his feet, it was devastating news. But Mullen vowed he would not let it get the best of him. Not even when he competed on “The Next Iron Chef” three years ago, making it to the final three. The frenetic experience, though, led to another rheumatoid arthritis flare-up, leaving him unable to move quickly around the set. He was eliminated, and returned home in a wheelchair.

But Mullen fought his way back, making changes to his life, including in his diet. He doesn’t believe that food can cure illness, necessarily. But he does believe that what you eat can improve your sense of well-being.

To that  end, he’s written “Hero Food” (Andrews McMeel), of which I recently received a review copy. Arranged by the seasons, it spotlights the 18 ingredients that have made a dramatic difference in his life, including almonds, parsley, fish and olive oil.

It’s no surprise that blueberries — rich in Vitamin C, manganese and antioxidants –make an appearance in the book. Specifically, in “Mutti’s Blueberry Boy Bait,” a cake that his grandmother started baking for him when he was just a tot. It’s based on a recipe by a 15-year-old girl who competed in the junior division of a Pillsbury baking contest in the 1950s.

I couldn’t resist the name, which appears to be apt, given that my husband was as endearing as can be after having a slice warm from the oven.

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Spring cleaning so often turns up a belt you haven’t seen in ages or a pair of shoes buried in the back of the closet you forgot you even bought.

For me, it also means finding stashes I’d overlooked in the freezer.

Cranberries, for instance.

Every winter holiday season, I always freeze an extra bag or two of fresh cranberries so that I can have their bright sweet-tart goodness around just a little bit longer.

Recently while rifling around the freezer, I came upon just such a bag. Thank goodness, too, because it made it so easy to bake up a pan full of “Saucy Cranberry Maple Pudding Cake.”

This homey dessert is featured in the new “Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts” (Artisan Books) by Bay Area baking expert Alice Medrich. The cookbook, of which I recently received a review copy, is full of fuss-free desserts such as “One-Bowl Vanilla Cake” and “Chocolate Pudding Pie.” I especially love the lists of easy tips, such as “10 Ways to Flavor Whipped Cream” and “Things to Do with Gingerbread.”

Imagine a giant moist, tender cornbread muffin baked atop a cranberry compote. That’s what this cake is like.

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Oh, I know what you’re thinking, “These sure look like cinnamon rolls.”

But don’t let your eyes fool you.

They may look like pillowy, yeasty cinnamon rolls, but they actually have the flakiness of biscuits.

These “Apple-Stuffed Biscuit Buns” are true butter bombs, too.

For nine rolls, you use 17 tablespoons of butter. (Cough, cough) But let’s not hone in on that, shall we? After all, without the butter, these wouldn’t be so wonderfully fall-apart flaky. And that’s what you want in a great biscuit or else why bother, right?

The recipe is from the new “The Apple Lover’s Cookbook”(W.W. Norton & Company) by Amy Traverso, senior food and home editor of Yankee magazine. The book, which I recently received a review copy of, is full of 150 recipes, both sweet and savory, that make use of fresh apples, apple cider and applesauce. There’s a handy primer, too, on varieties of apples that includes tasting notes, texture descriptions, best uses and origins.

These biscuit buns get their name from the fact that the dough is rolled up around a filling of cinnamon-sugar and one diced apple to create a pretty spiral effect when cut into slices.

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Sure, you can celebrate Valentine’s Day with chocolate.

But that’s just so expected, isn’t it?

Why not shake things up by giving a gift that’s sweet, symbolizes (ahem) fertility and is loaded with antioxidants that do a body good?

I’m talking about the humble grape.

You might be thinking, “boring,” but hear me out. The juicy seedless clusters you mindlessly pick up at the grocery store go all-out glam here.

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