Roast Apricots with Provençal Herbs

Few fruits have the same unique flavor as apricots and therefore they can be used in a thousand ways in gastronomy: for sorbets, to accompany meat or, in the form of jam, as a filling for cakes and tarts.
In today's recipe, however, they have the honor of being alone, the other ingredients revolve around them trying to enhance their sour but sweet taste.
This is a recipe that I found on Gourmet Traveler magazine, but I reworked it a bit linking it to the flavors of Provence with lavender flowers in addition to the original thyme (yes, you can use lavender in the food, do you know it?) and choosing a white Port as the dessert wine.
PS: the photo of this recipe has been made using flash lights (instead of my usual continue fluorescent lights) to participate in the second assignment of Strobist Boot Camp II. For those who do not know Strobist, it is a blog that talks about photographic lighting, it also has an active group on Flickr, with always interesting and useful topics (don't miss their Lighting 101 and 102 courses). Since for once there was this assignment regarding food photography I could not miss this opportunity.

Ingredients for approximately 6 serves: 12 apricots (not too much ripe), 1/2 cup cane sugar, 3/4 cup dessert vine, 1 and 1/3 cups whipped cream, 1 lemon, 4 thyme sprigs, 2 lavender flowers sprigs.

Preparation: cut the apricots in half and remove their core. Place them in a oven tray and sprinkle them with the sugar, the dessert wine, the lemon juice and its finely grated zest, thyme and lavender. Put the apricots to cook for about 25 minutes in the oven at 375 F. Then take four cooked ones and two tablespoons of their roasting juice, mash until smooth and add to the whipped cream. Serve in table the apricots with the cream thus prepared.