pflaumenkuchen

I can always tell when fall is around the corner because Italian (or prune) plums start showing up at the farmer's market in small boxes. As soon as I see them, I greedily buy at least two pounds and rush home to make a plum tart. But it wasn't always this way. I'd never tasted one until I met Daniel's grandmother. 

Omi had wide-set blue eyes and clean German bone structure. Ingrid Bergman had nothing on her. When I met her she was in her 80s and looked like an aging movie star, but she never wore makeup and dressed simply. She'd survived a war and the imprint never faded. But she was strong and kind and full of faith. She was china and granite, fragility and resilience rolled into one.

Her hands shook and she hated that. Before she died, she painstakingly copied out some of her favorite recipes and mailed them to me from Vancouver. She apologized for the quavering script, but of course I didn't mind. I felt deeply honored to receive those treasures from her and I could only imagine the effort it took her to do it, although she pretended it was nothing.

Omi was a world-class baker. Her cooking was also excellent, but she told me with a twinkle in her eye that she preferred to bake. Her plum kuchen (plum "cake" or "tart"--in this case, more of a tart) was a family favorite and completely different from the Southern pies and layer cakes I'd grown up eating. I felt like I'd officially joined the family when I received a copy of the recipe from my mother-in-law. 

Omi's tart oozes red syrup and fills with the house with cozy smells of cinnamon and purply jam. If you get it right, the crust crumbles in your mouth like buttery shortbread.

Plum kuchen is bittersweet. Just like hard-to-find Italian plums, it's poised between summer and fall. The only time to make it is right at that point when you start to regret all the summery things you should have done and didn't get to do, but also when the mornings dawn a little cooler, a little crisper, and you know fall is on its way. 

Plum Kuchen

You can also make the recipe in a 10-inch tart pan (if you like a thicker crust and lots of fruit, do the full recipe--in the images above I only used one pound of fruit and it wasn't enough!).

Preheat oven to 350.  Lightly grease a 9x11 pan. Combine crust ingredients and pat into the pan:

     2 1/2 c. flour
     4 Tbsp. sugar
     1 c. melted butter (2 sticks)
     2 Tbsp. white vinegar

Prick all over with fork.  Bake 10 min.

Meanwhile, gently combine in a large bowl:

     2 lbs. Italian prune plums, pitted and quartered (halved if small)

     4 Tbsp. flour

     1 1/3 c. sugar [I usually do more like 3/4 cup and add a bit of lemon zest or juice]

     2 Tbsp. cinnamon

Arrange plum pieces cut-side up on top of cooked crust. Sprinkle with extra flour/sugar mixture and 4 Tbsp. water. Bake at 350 for 40-60 minutes, or until the fruit is bubbly.

Note: I recently found a similar recipe from French food writer Béatrice Peltre. I had never seen another plum tart recipe before. Peltre's version calls for lime zest, vanilla bean, almond meal, and a small amount of sugar. I tried it and liked it a lot. It's more delicate than Omi's version, but they're both delicious.

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