Warm up the milk. Press a depression in the middle of 500 g flour. Crumble yeast into it. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar and half the milk. Mix with some flour to a pre-dough. Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 15 minutes
Melt 50 g butter in the remaining lukewarm milk. Add the egg, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar and half lemon zest to the pre-dough and knead until smooth. Cover and leave to rise for another 30 minutes
Drain the apricots. Collect the juice. Boil up with the rest of the lemon peel and vanilla sugar. Stir starch and 2 tablespoons of water until smooth, thicken juice with it. If necessary, halve the apricots and add. Cool down
Coarsely chop 75 g nuts, mix with honey. Knead the dough and form it into a roll on a little flour. Divide into 8 pieces and press flat. Put 1 heaped tsp. nut mixture in the middle of each piece. Press the dough over it and form into dumplings. Place on a floured baking tray. Cover the oven at 50 °C and leave to rise for about 20 minutes
Bring 150 ml water to the boil in a large pot. Place 3 dumplings next to each other in a steamer or perforated insert and hang in or place on a tripod. Then steam covered over a low heat for about 20 minutes. Take out dumplings and prick. Put them warm on a greased baking tray. Prepare the remaining dumplings in the same way
Finely chop the remaining nuts. Heat 75 g butter, stir in nuts. Spread over the dumplings. Arrange with apricots and dust with icing sugar. Decorate if necessary.