I love getting a basket of fresh, purple plums at this time of year. They are great to eat...and make wonderful desserts when baked. It's so easy to cut them in half and pop out the pit - no fussing with peeling or prying the stone!
This year I made a gorgeous Fresh Plum Flan from one of my favourite cookbooks, Anne Lindsay's Light Kitchen (Anne Lindsay & Associates Ltd., Macmillan Canada, 1994, Toronto, Canada). I think it's more of a coffee cake rather than a flan, with its tender cake base and brown sugar & cinnamon topping, but whatever you call it, it's amazing!
You can also use drained, canned plums in the winter or fresh pears or apples in the fall. It's such a simple recipe to prepare with a standard butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and milk cake flavoured with orange or lemon rind in the bottom of a springform pan and the halved plums arranged on top. A sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar makes a yummy topping with caramelizes during baking.
I found this very similar recipe for Plum Cake over at allrecipes.com - the only difference is the pan shape and no topping (but you could easily add a 1/2 cup of brown sugar with a tsp. of cinnamon on top).
Comments