Rustic Plum Cake

My CSA gave us a bunch of those prune plums and my Cook's illustrated cookbook has a yummy sounding recipe that I can now try!


As usual, I love their little notes at the beginning of the recipe. For this one it says

To get to an easy-to-make plum cake recipe with a hefty plum presence, we settled on a batter in which ground almonds replaced some of the flour, for a moist, rich cake that was strong enough to hold the plums aloft. Although Italian plums are well suited to baking, their season is too short to make them a practical choice. Instead, for our plum cake recipe, we poached supermarket plums in a few tablespoons of jam and brandy to brighten their flavor and keep them moist.

Oh boy - sounds great! It also gives us this information

This recipe works best with Italian plums, which are also called prune plums. If substituting regular red or black plums, use an equal weight of plums, cut them into eighths, and stir them a few times while cooking. Arrange slices, slightly overlapped, in two rings over surface of cake. Do not use canned Italian plums. Blanched whole almonds can be used but must be processed 30 seconds longer until finely ground. The brandy can be omitted, but then you will need to melt the jam with 1 tablespoon water before adding the plums. Don’t add the leftover plum cooking liquid to the cake before baking; reserve it and serve with the finished cake or over ice cream. The cake can be served with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Recipe can be found in the cookbook or via this link here.

So you start with some ripe prune plums, 2 tablespoons of jam (I used homemade jostaberry & bumped it up to 3 tablespoons) and 3 tablespoons of brandy.


The jam & brandy go into a skillet on medium heat until it thickens a bit.


Then you add the plums (cut in half, pitted &  face down) in skillet. Shaking pan gently so plums don't stick and cook about 5 minutes. Then let cool as you make the cake.



Get that 9 inch springform pan ready and oven pre-heated to 350.


Process the sugar & almonds in a food processor until the nuts are finely ground (about 1 minute). Add flour, baking powder, and salt - pulsing to combine (5 pulses).


Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse sand, about 20 pulses.


Pour batter into prepared pan. Smooth top with rubber spatula. Stir plums to coat with syrup. Arrange plum halves, skin side down, evenly over the surface of the batter. Spoon syrup onto halves.

Wow - this is super easy, no bowls for mixing - just the food processor. Well and that little bit with the skillet at the beginning.



Bake until cake is golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few crumbs attached, about 40-50 minute.


Run thin knife around sides of cake pan to loosen. Cool in pan on wire rack until just warm or to room temperature, at least 30 minutes. Dust with confectioner's sugar and serve. Yum!

postscript - what to do with the leftover yummy syrup in the skillet and that egg yolk? I added another egg to the yolk and whipped it up. Poured it into the pan (reheated pan first of course) and made a delicious omelet for my lunch

I added a few sprinkles of shredded sharp provolone cheese before closing up my omelet. Great leftovers solution! Delicious!

 

Perfectly Peaches!

On the way home from my book group weekend, we stopped at Bishop's Orchards in Guilford, Connecticut to buy some wonderful foodstuffs. They have great produce and tempting high end food items. Worth a visit if you are on the shoreline of Connecticut.

One of the items on my list was PEACHES. One of those baskets of utility peaches, so I could spend my day off making peachy things.

First thing - Summer Peach Cake. I have the Cooks Illustrated Cookbook and they have great recipes, all of which I want to try (all 890 pages...). The recipe can also be found on line here.  I love their little preambles....why this recipe works. This recipe has this introduction:

Why this recipe works:

To achieve the right texture for our Peach Cake, we sprinkled the peach slices with sugar and baked them in a very hot oven until they lost most of their moisture. Tossing the cooled peaches with crushed panko bread crumbs sopped up the gooey, viscous film that the peaches had acquired in the… read more

To achieve the right texture for our Peach Cake, we sprinkled the peach slices with sugar and baked them in a very hot oven until they lost most of their moisture. Tossing the cooled peaches with crushed panko bread crumbs sopped up the gooey, viscous film that the peaches had acquired in the oven. (The panko gets incorporated into the cake as the peach cake cooks.) Adding some peach schnapps to the batter boosted the peach flavor and gave us a peach cake recipe that could be made even with not-so-perfect peaches.

So the first thing I do when preparing a new recipe is read it over and do any prep first. Like preheating my oven, preparing my pans (9 inch spring-form & baking sheet), getting things to room temperature (eggs) and melting my butter (recipe says to melt & cool).

Now to tackle the peaches. The recipe calls for 2 1/2 pounds of peaches. Mine are large peaches. So what does 2 1/2 pounds translate to in "number of large peaches". I found this helpful fact

1 pound of fresh Peaches will equal: - 3 medium Peaches, or - 2 cups sliced Peaches. from Westview Orchards (came up first in my search, sounded authoritative). 

I translated that into 6 large peaches. I think. I just cut them up.

Thought I was keeping track but can't be sure. What I did do was to first slice 24 1/2 inch peach wedges as instructed by the recipe and gently tossed them with 2 tablespoons peach schnapps, 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice and 1 tablespoon granulated sugar. These are for arranging nicely on top. I put these aside. Then I needed peaches for the middle layer. So I sliced 4 more peaches and cut the wedges into 3-4 chunks each. These I tossed with 3 tablespoons schnapps, 2 teaspoons lemon juice and 2 tablespoons granulated sugar. I was preheating the oven to 425 degrees F and prepared a baking sheet by covering it with aluminum foil and sprayed with coconut oil spray. On this I spread the chunks of peaches with the juices into a single layer.

They baked until they were caramelizing and thickening at the edges of the pan, about 30 minutes. These came out of the oven and were set aside on a hot mat on my kitchen table to cool.


I reduced my oven to 350 degrees at this point.

Then it was time to prepare the batter.

I whisked the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. Set that aside.

Then whisked 1/3 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar and eggs together in a bowl until it was thick and thoroughly combined. At this point, in went the butter I had melted earlier. I used the whisk and combined it well. Next went the sour cream and vanilla extract (didn't do the almond).

 Again whisking well until combined. Then the flour mixture and liquid mixture get whisked together until just combined (do not over mix). Set this aside.

Now we go back to those chunks of peaches that have been cooling. Sprinkly panko crumbs on top and gently mix together. The panko absorbs all the deliciousness of the caramelized liquid and is absorbed into the batter when cooking so no-one is the wiser.


Now we put this all together in the spring form pan. First I spread half the batter on the bottom. Then I gently spread the panko-ed peach chunks on top of that for my middle layer.

 I then spread the remaining batter on top. Then for our final pretty detail....I arranged my reserved peach wedges, slightly overlapping, in a ring around the outside of the top of the batter, Then arranged another ring in the inside. 24 wedges was the perfect amount. So professional looking!

Into the 350 degree oven this goes.

The recipe calls for 50 to 60 minutes until a toothpick inserted in center comes clean. I first set the oven for 50 minutes. Obviously not ready. Added 10 minutes. Still clearly not ready. Then kept adding 5 minutes or so to the timer and checking. Honestly it took about an hour and a half all together! And I think my oven usually runs hot. But it looks pretty and perfectly done. Hope it tastes good later!

Next - Peach jam....

There are a lot of recipes on line. But I don't like using pectin when I make jam. Or too much sugar. So I'm going with Martha Stewart's take, recipe here.  I'll process this jam so I can donate some to sell at our church fair and have some to give as gifts this Christmas. Martha has this to say about the recipe:

Preserve orchard-fresh flavor with nothing but sugar, lemon, and salt.

I really was making both these items at the same time. Once I got the cut up peaches in the oven for the recipe above I started to peel and cut up peaches for my jam.

I basically doubled Martha's recipe. So I prepared about 20 peaches. As I went along I pulsed them n my food processor and dumped them in my large pot.

 I peeled them directly into one of our large compost bins so that saved time for clean up. (yeah maybe it's gross displaying a picture of my compost bin...)

Then I mixed in roughly 2 1/2 cups of granulated sugar, a teaspoon of course salt and a "pour" of peach schnapps. (the schnapps was out from the previous recipe so I figured, "why not", It will intensify the peach flavor and the alcohol will burn off).

I put the big pot on medium on my stove top and let it slowly come to a boil.

 This took a long time. I stirred now & then. And then I just let it gently boil for a long time. Lots longer than the 12 minutes called for in the recipe. Maybe an hour. I let it boil down in size and become a bit thick. Really I stopped cooking it once I had finished everything else in the kitchen. I finished the cake (see above), washed all my dishes and prepared the canning jars and lids.

I wanted to finish up so I could eat lunch and finish my blog post. And then go correct a few papers. Then read my book.

Here are my jars of jam.

Here is my boiling bath.

And here are the completed jars. Yum.

NH Book Group Oct 2015 - June 2016

Another lovely start to our book reading year. We had our annual book group weekend at Ruth & Stearn's beautiful home in Rhode Island. And once again we had a terrific time with beach relaxation, food, drink, books & scrabble. I'm even inspired to go back to playing words with friends. Even though I lose.

Here is our traditional photo courtesy Chef & chief photographer David.

We had a relaxing Saturday afternoon at the beach.

Then it was back to the house for some happy hour and a little beverage tasting. All were enjoyable with everyone having their favorites.

Of course this was all with a beautiful view to entertain us (as well a much conversation).

We got down to a little business during this time. We all had book choices and did a nice job of lining up our year.

October (meeting 10/26 at Pat's house)

November (meeting 11/23 At LuAnn's house)

December  (tentatively 12/14 at Susan's)- our annual Christmas party with a Yankee gift swap. No book chosen but open to something light if anyone has suggestions (we don't usually do a structured conversation at our holiday party).

January (meeting 1/11 at Mary Anne's house).

February (meeting 2/29 location pending)

March (meeting 3/21 location pending)

April (meeting 4/25 Cindy's house)

May (meeting 5/23 JinYoung's house)

June - tentatively June 20? TBA...this is our potluck end of year meeting. We don't typically have a book unless it is something fun, summer light. And at this meeting we share summer reading ideas. And have lots of good food and fun.

Finally we rounded out our Saturday with a lovely dinner. Chef Dave grilled some salmon for us on a cedar plank, exquisite!

Many of us are inspired to try the recipe and technique. Recipe HERE.

And we finished dinner with some delicious dessert!

So that's our upcoming year of reading. This has been updated with our April book choice. Which sounds really great. And if anyone has suggestions for December and June - we're open to reading something those months even though those are our "party" meetings.

And finally a "shout out" to our members who couldn't come to the weekend retreat - Marjorie, LuAnn, Janet, Carol, Susan - you were all missed and we hope to see you all over the coming months!