Fresh Plum Crumble

If I were to ask you to name your favorite fresh summer fruit, my guess is that a plum would be far from the top of the list. Truly, the plum is unappreciated, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Sweet, juicy, with a tasty and nutritious skin (not to mention the antioxidants), plums make a great snack. When turned into jam, chutney, coffeecake, or dessert, they are downright delicious. If you've never made a summer dessert out of plums before, now is the time.

This recipe is from Taste of Home magazine. I adapted it from the original that called for 7 medium plums. I have no idea what a medium plum is. There are regular plums and baby plums. Is one considered large and the other small, in which case, what is a medium?  No matter, I selected two packages of organic plums from Melissa's Produce and that worked out just right.

Everyone who has tried this crumble absolutely loves it. I included a large piece when I made a dinner drop at my dad's and he deemed it outstanding. I agree. It is easy to assemble, requires no special equipment, and I give you permission to pop a couple of plum pieces into your mouth while baking. Serve this warm or at room temperature, with ice cream or without.  You'll be wishing you'd bought double the amount of plums once you taste this delicious summer dessert.

It's plum season!  Celebrate!

Fresh Plum Crumble

1 pkg. Melissa's Organic Plumcots, pitted and quartered

1 pkg. Melissa's Organic Plum Bites, pitted and quartered

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons plus 1 cup all-purpose flour, divided

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground mace

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/2 cup butter, melted

In a large bowl, combine the plums, brown sugar, 3 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Spoon into a greased 2-qt. baking dish.

In a small bowl, combine the sugar, baking powder, salt, mace and remaining flour. Add egg; stir with a fork until crumbly. Sprinkle over plum mixture. Drizzle with butter.

Bake at 375° for 40-45 minutes or until plums are tender and top is golden brown. Cool for 10 minutes before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature. Yield: 8 servings.

This post is linked to:

Melt In Your Mouth 
Inspire Me Tuesday

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Try a New Recipe Tuesday

Tasty Tuesdays

Full Plate Thursday

Foodie Friday

Plum Streusel Coffeecake

Prior to making yesterday’s Plum Butter, I measured out ¾ pound of plums and set them aside to make coffeecake.  You know how you tear recipes out of magazines, then put them in a file and never look at them again?  Well, I decided to look at that file last week, and found this recipe from a 1995 issue of Gourmet.  My mother is the coffeecake maker in our family these days, but I wanted to give this one a try.  Imagine then, my dismay, when one of the plums went missing!  I have baskets of peaches, nectarines, a bunch of bananas, and sliced melon all available for consumption, but did my husband go for any of these things?  No!  He managed to find the plums (well, plumcots, if you must know) that I had hidden behind the cauliflower in the vegetable bin, and he ate one!

“Boy,” he said, “was that plum ever delicious.”

“Yeah,” I said through gritted teeth, “I’ll bet it was!”

For a man who can’t find the butter that is right in front of him, he was sure an ace at ferreting out my saved plums.  So, after an unwanted, and curmudgeonly, I might add, trip to the grocery store to buy one lone plum, I was finally on my way to creating this delicious breakfast cake.  It’s make ahead, can be frozen prior to baking and baked later, or frozen after baking, and it's beautiful, and delicious!

Plum Streusel Coffeecake

Gourmet, September 1995

For streusel
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup walnuts
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into pieces and softened
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

For cake batter
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 pound Melissa's plumcots (4 to 5 medium), sliced
confectioners' sugar for sifting over cake

Preheat oven to 350°F. and butter and flour a 9-inch round or square baking pan at least 2 inches deep.

Make streusel: In a food processor pulse together streusel ingredients until combined well and crumbly.

Make cake batter: In a bowl with an electric mixer beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy and add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, and vanilla. Sift in flour with baking powder and salt and beat until just combined.

Spread cake batter in pan, smoothing top, and arrange plum slices over it in slightly overlapping concentric circles. Sprinkle streusel over plum slices and bake cake in middle of oven 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Coffeecake may be made 1 week ahead: Cool cake completely in pan on a rack and freeze, wrapped well in plastic wrap and foil. Reheat cake, unwrapped but not thawed, in a preheated 350°F. oven until heated through, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool cake slightly on a rack and sift confectioners' sugar over it. Serve coffeecake warm or at room temperature.

If you love coffeecakes, check out this book.  It’s the Bible for coffee cake lovers:

This post is linked to:

On the Menu Monday

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Try a New Recipe Tuesday

What's Cooking Wednesday

Plum Butter

My grandmother used to be the queen of jams, jellies, and preserves.  There were very few days in midsummer when I would walk into her kitchen and not see a big pot of sugar and fruit bubbling away on the stove, or jewel-toned jars of preserves lined up on the wooden farm table waiting to be topped with liquid paraffin.  What remained in the bottom of the pot after the jars were filled was poured into a heavy ceramic bowl and placed on the table next to a big pile of warm biscuits.  I could not wait to dig in!

When she passed away and I inherited her cookbook, I immediately paged through looking for her recipes.  Largely, all I found was one lowly recipe calling for equal parts of sugar and fruit, cooked until done.  It was because of this lack of information, I think, that I set out to collect as many recipes for jams and jellies that I could, always envisioning my own kitchen smelling of hot fruit, and jars filled with the literal fruits of my labor.  This past week I finally decided to try one of them, choosing a recipe that I know my grandmother had never made.  She was an ace at apple butter, but plum butter?  Never!  Her plums were reserved for pies and coffeecakes.

This recipe is from a July 2001 issue of Gourmet magazine (yes, I have been saving them for a long time!).  It’s easy to do, just be sure not to overcook it (as I did the first time) or you’ll end up with something tasty, but akin to a gummy candy.

Plum Butter

1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
4 lbs. Melissa’s Plumcots, cut into 1/2-inch wedges
3 cups sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

Special equipment: 5 (1/2-pint) canning jars with lids and screw bands; a food mill fitted with fine disk

Sterilize jars and lids.

Freeze several small plates to use for testing butter.

Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into a 5- to 6-quart heavy pot. Add pod and stir in remaining ingredients. Slowly bring to a rolling boil over moderate heat (this will take about 15 minutes), stirring frequently. Boil, uncovered, stirring frequently, until plums are tender, about 5 minutes.

Discard pod. Purée plums with liquid in batches in food mill set over a bowl. Transfer purée to pot and simmer over low heat, stirring and scraping bottom of pan frequently, until very thick, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. (To test for doneness, drop a spoonful of plum butter on a chilled plate, then tilt; the mixture should not be runny. It should be about as thick as jam.)

Drain jars upside down on a clean kitchen towel 1 minute, then invert. Ladle plum butter into jars, leaving 1/4 inch of space at top, then run a thin knife between plum butter and jar to eliminate air bubbles.

Seal, process, and store filled jars, boiling plum butter in jars 10 minutes.

Let plum butter stand in jars at least 1 day for flavors to develop.

This post is linked to:

Seasonal Sunday

Try a New Recipe Tuesday

What's Cooking Wednesday