By Pamela Walker, writer and local farm and food activist (www.GrowingGoodThingsToEat.com)
Prune plums glow blue-purple and never fail to catch my eye. I bought some recently from Gayle Ice of Ice’s Organic Farm, and ate them fresh. But if I’d wanted to make some sort of confection with them, I’d have turned to Marian Burros’s original plum torte recipe from 1983. Not being an avid baker but only an occasional and lazy one, I look for simplicity in baking, and so I seized on this recipe when it first appeared and have enjoyed it many times since.
Marian Burros’s Plum Torte
Ingredients:
- 3/4 to 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup unbleached flour, sifted
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- Pinch of salt (optional)
- 2 eggs
- 24 halves pitted purple plums
- Sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon, for topping
Preparation:
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cream the sugar and butter in a bowl. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and beat well.
- Spoon the batter into a spring-form pan of 8, 9 or 10 inches. Place the plum halves skin side up on top of the batter. Sprinkle lightly with sugar and lemon juice, depending on the sweetness of the fruit. Sprinkle with about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, depending on how much you like cinnamon.
- Bake 1 hour, approximately.
- Remove and cool; refrigerate or freeze if desired. Or cool to lukewarm and serve plain or with whipped cream. (To serve a torte that was frozen, defrost and reheat it briefly at 300 degrees.)
Read The New York Times’ article “The Story Behind Our Most Requested Recipe Ever”
