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Inaugural Adventure. (Plaumkuchen)

My Inaugural Adventure was meant to be something slightly more seasonal but an unexpected bounty of fresh fruit changed that. My first posted baking adventure is Pflaumkuchen.

Yesterday we went to a birthday party with my oldest daughter. Some ten or so 4 and 5 year olds running around (hyped up on chocolate and sweets) in the most amazing child friendly back yard I've seen in a long time. One of the perks of living in Germany that I've grown to love is that there are fruit trees EVERYWHERE! Our friends happen to have Apple trees and Plum trees in this wonderful back yard and the plums were absolutely ripe for the picking. One of the other mothers asked if the family was going to eat the plums or if they were just going to be left to fall haphazard and rot. Upon hearing there were no plans for these amazing fruits she asked if she could pick them herself. Two minutes later, with a pail and a ladder, she unburdened the tree of it's sweet treasures. We were given a sack of plums to take home with us. My daughter even asked for plums for dessert! So needless to say I have this BEAUTIFUL bowl of FREE fresh picked plums.

So in the spirit of free German fruit I thought I'd try my hand at a delicious German recipe.

I got the original recipe here ( http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/414871131548051/Pflaumenkuchen.html ) it's in German so I put it in Google translate since my German skills are still lacking. The directions are sorely lacking in the translation so I loosely followed what I understood. I do cook with a kitchen scale so I will do the foot work and do the conversions for you. The recipe calls for a 10 inch springform pan but I'm sure any cake pan will work.

Ingredients

125 g butter, room temp (1.1 stick) 125 g sugar (1/2 cup) 1 package vanilla sugar (I think 1 tsp of vanilla extract would sub. fine) 2 eggs 175 g flour ( 1 1/2 cups) 1 teaspoon baking powder 100 g Almonds finely crushed (approx 3.5 ounces)

For the topping: 750 g pitted prunes, halved ( 1 1/2 lbs) Powder Sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 175 ° C (350 F)

The directions started getting sketchy here so I will word it myself

2. Wash plums.

3. Halve (I quarted I thought it looked prettier) and pit plums.

(note I don't know what type of plums these are they are small they look like GIANT olives but from pictures I've seen you can use your choice of plum)

4. Line Spring form pan with baking paper and grease if the paper is not coated. (I lined and greased but I think you could simple grease your cake pan and be fine)

5. Prepare ingredients into dough. My take is this.. and I used my stand mixer.

combine dry ingredients add butter and eggs mix until well blended. It appears rather cookie dough like, not a pourable batter.

After seeing this I tripled the amount of batter. In hindsight I should only have doubled it for the size pan I was using.

6. Pour batter and smooth out. Well scrape batter from bowl and smooth.

7. Arrange plum slices tightly together in any design pleasing to you. Press firmly in to batter.

8. The recipe calls for wrapping the bottom of your in aluminum foil (shiny side touching the pan), to keep any leaked fruit juices from dirtying the oven. This I believe is open to preference.

9. Bake for 70 minutes on second rack from the bottom. It doesn't say how to check for completion so I did the toothpick test and removed it at 70 minutes and the toothpick came out clean.

Tumblr is cutting me off lets see if I can put final pictures in a comment at the bottom

#pflaumkuchen #baking #living abroad