plums

Brown Butter Plum Cake

Well, as promised, here is the Brown Butter Plum Cake recipe. I connected with it via a link in Tastespotting, and that link took me to Patent and the Pantry, another foodie-related site. As the host there said, one of the wonderful things about cooking is the freedom to make recipes your own, and it really is fun to watch recipes morph as they go from hand to hand, each change reflecting the invididual tastes of the cooks involved. Gwendolyn, the host of that site, found the recipe on another site, hosted by a Julie, and I took the recipe and made some changes of my own. (You can see the original recipe by clicking on the earlier link for Patent and the Pantry.)

The changes I made were simply taste changes–I like more fruit, I love vanilla and spices, and I had some cinnamon sugar to use up. When I was young and first learning to cook and bake, I would stick pretty closely to the recipes, but after a while, once I learned something of the science of food, how ingredients work together, and began to see how flavorings, spices and condiments could combine and recombine to provide a wide variety of tastes, I was able to begin to play with things without being too worried about the result. Once in a great while there would be a culinary bomb (Jim reminds me of the great Carrot Ginger Soup Fiasco), but overall, what I make ends up being at least edible, and at times, pretty darn good. So at age 53, I have a bit more confidence than I did at the age of 23, I know what kinds of flavors tend to work together, I know what kinds of amounts will work, and so there has opened up a whole field of play in the world of food. I love being able to relax and not worry about things as I mess around in the kitchen.

So, here is the recipe, and help yourself to any changes you might want to make! Be bold! Or be cautious! Be whatever you need to be, but do enjoy yourself!

By the way, this is great with vanilla ice cream (I know I say that a lot, but so many things are good with vanilla ice cream, it just can’t be helped!)

Brown Butter Plum Cake—Valerie’s Version

§ 16 to 20 prune plums, or 8 or so larger fruits—plums, peaches, etc.

§ 3/4 cup + 3 Tbsp. sugar, divided

§ 1 tsp. cinnamon

§ ½ t. nutmeg

§ 1/2 cup butter

§ 2 large eggs

§ 1 cup all-purpose flour

§ Pinch of salt

§ ½ t. baking powder

§ 1 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350F and butter a pie plate or 2 qt. casserole dish. Pit and quarter your fruit and place in prepared dish.

Combine 3 T. sugar with cinnamon and nutmeg, and sprinkle 2 T. of the mixture over the sliced fruit.

Melt the butter in a saucepan or small frying pan and keep cooking it for about five minutes until it turns golden. Swirl and stir the butter as you watch it, because it can burn easily. When it becomes a lovely caramel brown under the foam, remove immediately from heat.

This is the lovely dark amber caramel color you are aiming for with the browned butter

Slightly beat eggs, adding vanilla. Whisk together the flour, ¾ c. sugar, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Pour the butter into a bowl and add flour mixture and eggs, mixing well.

The batter takes on the beautiful color of the butter...

Pour and spread over the fruit and sprinkle with remaining spiced sugar. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until golden and the juices are coming up around the edges. Let cool for a few minutes before serving.

Pickled Plums

Dusky, ripe, juicy plums....

I am sure that many of you are aware of Tastespotting, a site that serves to display pictures submitted by other websites; and these are not just ANY pictures–these are pictures selected to meet a certain aesthetic, and they are absolutely beautiful. For those of you not familiar with this resource, you can link with it here: Tastespotting

Anyway, on to the plums….this being the season for plums and all, the pictures on Tastespotting that featured recipes using this fruit continued to catch my eye, and I finally gave in to two items in particular: Sweet and Sour Plums with Vanilla and Bay Leaf (a kind of pickled plum) and Brown Butter Plum Cake. (Tastespotting has a search tool–enter the word “plum” and you should be able to find pictures of each of these.) I picked up a half bushel of the lovelies from our local fruit vendor (much more cost effective in bulk!) and carried them home to be transformed: First, the sweet and sour plums…

Well, I found I needed my daughter’s help with this recipe, because when I clicked on the picture, it took me to a lovely website, Hedonistin Blogspot, but all was in German. Having had French in school, I can usually wrangle some degree of meaning from French and even Spanish language texts, but German is beyond me. Fortunately, my daughter spent her senior year of high school Germany and is proficient enough in the language that she was able to help me out with this. As a result, I now have two gallons of these plums chilling nicely in my refrigerator, the result of putting together four batches over the last two days. They are simple to put together, absolutely delicious, with a nice spicy bite from the vinegar and the grated fresh ginger in the syrup. We had some with vanilla ice cream, and the combination was delicious.

Here, with Christina’s help, is the recipe as translated from the Hedonistin site:

SWEET AND SOUR PLUMS

The picture is a bit fuzzy, but I think you can see how pretty these are; that is a bay leaf and a bit of vanilla bean lying across the top.

1.5kg little plums ripe, but firm (3.25 lbs–I used prune plums)

750 ml vinegar (I’m guessing white distilled)

250 g. sugar ( about 9 oz., a little over a cup)

1 vanilla bean, split and seeded (if you have no vanilla bean, add a little vanilla to the syrup before pouring over plums at the end

3-4 laurel leaves (bay leaves), fresh (I only had the dried version)

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated

Have two quart jars or four pint jars clean and sterilized, with either plastic lids or rings and lids if you prefer. These can be stored in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 months; no instructions were given for sealing for longer storage.

Simmer the vinegar with the sugar and spices in an enameled or stainless steel pan (they suggest putting the ginger bay leaves in a tea-ball or infuser, but I put them directly in the syrup). Wash and dry the plums, and then pierce the skin all around with the point of a paring knife (5 or 6 pokes seemed to do it).

Lay the plums next to each other evenly in the vinegar- the fruit shouldn’t lay over each other, and poach the plums for a few minutes, making sure that the skins don’t burst (the skins will burst a little bit, but the slower the simmer, the less they burst). Get them out with a slotted spoon, drain well, and put into a jar. When all the plums are cooked, continue to cook the liquid for 10 minutes (reduce).

Pour the vinegar reduction over the plums making sure they are completely covered, and they should keep for 3-4months in the fridge. I kept the bay leaves and vanilla beans in the jars as well…I like the way it looks, and I think it should only help the flavor intensify. We’ll see! One of these jars will be going to Christina when we visit at Thanksgiving–it’s the least I can do for my very own translator!

Tomorrow I will share with you the my version of the recipe for Brown Butter Plum Cake…tonight, I will just eat some!