Autumn Tart with Plums and Mascarpone

This is the tart that I make most often. It is easy, delicious and, so far, everyone loved it. Moreover, the crust for it can be made up to two weeks ahead and keeping it refrigerated makes it actually more delicate. I have already shared the recipe for this tart, but recently I have been experimenting with it and, today, I would like to share of the new versions, which I think turned out quite good.

I make this tart with different fruits, toppings, or add extra ingredients to the base. Last weekend, I made it with plums. In Poland, fall is the season when we make many desserts with plums. For baking, the best are those dark blue plums called Hungarian or Italian plums but, if they are not available, any black or dark plums can be used instead.

The base is the same that I always used; however, this time I changed the topping. Since plums can be quite strong in taste and are often sour, to contrast them, instead of cream I used Mascarpone cheese to make a delicate and somewhat richer topping. This tart can be served at room temperature but it tastes even better slightly warm, especially on a cold autumn day.



Tart with Plums and Mascarpone

Ingredients:
(For 10" tart form with removable walls)

For the crust:
2 sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature,
1/2 cup confectioners sugar,
2 cups all purpose flour,

For the topping:
1 and 1/2 lb Italian plums (or any other not too juicy dark plums),
17 oz box of mascarpone cheese,
1 large egg,
1/3 cup sugar.

Preparation:
1. To make the crust, put butter, confectioners sugar and flour in a large bowl. Working with your hands make crumbles. Use extra flour to clean your hands.



2. Place the crust in a large ziplock bag, and let it chill in a refrigerator for at least an hour, up to two weeks.
3. Preheat the oven to 350F.
4. Spread the crust on the baking form and press gently into bottom and walls.
5. Remove seeds from the plums and cut them into thick slices. Arrange at the bottom of the form on top of the crust.



6. Bake the crust for about 20 minutes, until set and light gold.
7. In a medium bowl mix sugar with egg and Mascarpone cheese until smooth. Pour over the pre-baked tart.
8. Place the tart in the oven and bake for about 30-40 minutes until the crust is gold and topping set.

Roasted Plums Dessert

These are busy days and with the beginning of the school year we understand and appreciate the value of "easy" cooking even more than we usually do. This simple dessert that I came up with the other day perfectly fits into this category. It is also a nice seasonal dessert made of plums, which are now their tastiest peak, and ice cream.

I roasted the plums in an oven until they got soft and juicy. Then I prepared an ice cream-cookie topping for them. It melted on warm plums into a wonderful vanilla cream. Simple and delicious.



Roasted Plums Dessert
(Makes 6 portions)

Ingredients:
2 lb round black plums,
2 tbsp brown sugar,
1 pint Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream,
1/2 cup digestive or graham cookies, crushed,
2 tbsp pistachios or slivered almonds to decorate.

Preparation:
1. Melt ice cream until soft. Add crushed cookies and mix gently. Freeze again.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Cut plums in halves, remove stones, and slice them into thick wages. Sprinkle with sugar and mix.



4. Put a sheet of wax paper on a cookie sheet. Spread the plums on top and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Let them cool until just warm.
5. Divide plums into serving bowls or plates, scoop ice cream on top, decorate with nuts and serve.

Yogurt Plum Cake--A Simple Autumn Dessert

From what I know about the culinary world, I would risk a statement that only Polish and French, and perhaps also Italians and Hungarians, have such a great affection for plums. This may apply to all kind of plums, but in particular to these oval and dark purple one with the blueish coating on their skin, which in Poland we call Hungarian plums, and here they are called Italian plums. In France, I often ate them in classic tarts on a short or puff pastry crust. But once, many years ago, a French friend made a cake with a plum preserve. I still remember how exquisitely delicious it was--with a very thin and buttery crust that immediately dissolved in the mouth and long-cooked preserve or rather a plum butter on top. I always promise myself to email her and ask about her recipe.

When Italian plums are picked at their ripest stage, they have most aroma and flesh, and least juice of all the plums I tried. This quality makes them perfect for baking, preserving, and using for all kinds of cooking. Unlike other plums that grow all over the world and are often available all year round, Italian plums appear in my food store only for a short time in mid-September and mid-October. So I thought that they were already gone, but today I found them again in one of the stores. I bought two pounds of them and made this simple cake.

Yogurt Plum Cake

Ingredients:
2 lb Italian plums, washed,

3 eggs,
1/2 cup (150g) natural yogurt,
1 and 1/2 cup flour (250g) all purpose flour,
2 cups (300g) powdered sugar,
1/2 cup (150ml) vegetable oil,
1 and 1/4 oz (7g) sachet dry yeasts,
1 tsp vanilla extract,
juice from one lemon,
1 tbsp butter to grease the baking tin,
2 tbsp fine corn meal.

Preparation:
1. Cut washed plums in half alongside and remove the pit.
2. Preheat oven to 400 F (200 C).
3. Separate egg yolks and whites. Beat the yolks with powdered sugar until almost white. Add to that mixture yogurt, oil and lemon juice. Mix.
4. In a separate bowl combine flour and yeast and add to the batter. Mix until it becomes smooth.
5. Beat the whites until stiff. Using spatula fold them into the batter.
6. Grease the baking tin (about 9 by 13 inches) with butter. Sprinkle it with corn meal and spread the batter all over it. Place halves of plums on top, skin up.

7. Bake for about 35-40 minutes, until the cake is set and light gold.

Serve dusted with icing sugar.

Sweet Plum Dumplings--All I Eat These Days

I am in Poland, and I promised myself to take some time off from the blog, especially that I have to cope with rather poor internet access. But of course I think about the food blog all the time and still take many pictures. I try new ideas with old ingredients (which means more beets and cabbage in the future) but also eat a lot of simple, seasonal, and tastyPolish food. My native cuisine and its ingredients inspire me so much that I cannot resist to share at least a couple of recipes over this remaining days here.

Eating in Poland to me is always about Polish food and I forget completely that those gorgeous tomatoes would taste fantastic with burrata, or the local smoked ham would go well with fresh figs. Instead, I eat tons of tomatoes Polish way--with onion and oil--and I eat a lot of salted cucumbers. Every other day I cannot resist fresh wild mushrooms, mostly chanterelles that are picked up at dawn the day you can buy them at the market, and gain extra pounds indulging in different cakes made with fruits that are popular in Poland--sour cherries, red currants, or Hungarian plums.

Today's recipe is a result of one of such feasts and is one of my favorite sweet dinners. I ate these dumplings (knedle in Polish) often in late summer and early fall all my childhood. Their taste--coming from a blend of a starchy dough, plums, butter, sugar, and cinnamon--is one of a kind. If you ever wonder what to do with those blue-black plums (they are called Italian in the US), my suggestion is to try and cook this wonderful dish.

My grandmother used to wonder how such a petite body as mine could accommodate so many of them--my record number was eight, but my usual intake depended on their size, which could vary from that of a tennis ball to a small cannon ball, depending on the size of the plums. I hope I convinced you to try.

Plum Dumplings
(Makes ten large dumplings)

Ingredients:
3 packed cups of cooked potatoes,
1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour, plus extra to clean hands and dust the working surface,
1 egg,
1 tbsp potato or corn starch,
10 Hungarian or Italian plums,
1 stick of butter, melted,
1 cup sugar (more or less, depending on how sour the plums are),
1 tbsp salt,
cinnamon.

Preparation:
1. Cook potatoes and cool them down. Mush them into a purée.
2. Place potatoes in a large bowl, add the egg and both flours and make a smooth dough.
3. Cut plums in halves, but leave them connected, remove pits and put a tsp of sugar inside each of them.

4. Roll the dough in a thick log and cut into 10 equal cylinders. Place a plum on each of them and close the dough around the plums. Roll it in hands to make a perfect ball. Place on a large cutting board, dusted with flour.

5. In a large pot bring to boil water with one tbsp of salt. Dump half of the dumplings and, depending on their size, cook them for 3-5 minutes from the moment they appear on the surface. Repeat with the the rest of the dumplings.
6. Drain the dumplings, place on a serving place, drizzle with hot melted butter, a tsp of sugar per dumpling, and dust with cinnamon.

Serve and enjoy.

Plum Cake--A Never Ending Story

When I read other, already famous food blogs, I get very jealous these days. Most of them, like Orangette, Mowielicious, or Smitten Kitchen have already published their recipes for plum cake--the perfect fall dessert. And I still look at my recently made pictures and ideas and cannot decide which one I should share.

The only excuse for sitting on the fence for so long is that in Poland we probably have one of the richest collections of plum recipes in the world. We make many plum cakes, either with a yeast- or a baking powder-based crust. Some are soft and spongy, and some are crunchy. We also make potato dumplings with plums inside, which we serve with butter, cinamon, and sugar. (These are my favorite and I have to be restrained when I start eating them.) We prepare plums in cooked desserts, we make a plum jam spread, and preserve them in vinegar as meat accompaniment. We also make a Christmas soup with dried plums (prunes) and, like many other nations in that region, we also produce a plum vodka, called Slivovica.

There are also many different kinds of plums being cultivated in Poland, and when I think of what was growing in my family garden I could easily name at least five different types--tiny, yellow ones called Mirabelle, big and round, which here are called simply Black, oval and dark Italian or as we called them Hungarian (in various sizes), which are most popular for making preserves, round and pinkish as those that here are called Satsuma plums, and several others that I simply do not see anywhere else in the world.

I simply love them for their sweetness and the sophisticated, yet subtle taste, and their unlimited culinary uses.

My today's recipe was not the one that was most popular in my home, as we made mostly tarts with Italian plums (I will post a recipe for that in the future), but I finally decided on this cake, because it is very universal as any available kind of plums can be used to make it.

Plum Cake
(For the 11'' baking tin)

Ingredients:
All the ingredients should be in room temperature.
2 lb any ripe plums,
4 eggs,
1 stick butter,
1 cup sugar for the cake and 3 tbsp for the topping,
1 2/3 cup flour,
1 tbsp corn starch,
2 tsp baking powder,
4-5 tbsp sour cream,
1 tbsp vanilla extract,
2 tbsp slivered almonds (optional).

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 250F.
2. Grease baking pan with butter.
3. If you use Italian plums just cut them in halves and remove stones, any bigger plums you should cut in quarters.
4. Using a mixer beat together butter and sugar until smooth.
5. Add flour, corn starch, baking powder, and vanilla extract (at the very end), and mix.
6. Add 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks (save the two remaining whites) and beat with a mixer until all the ingredients are combined into a perfect blend.
7. Add sour cream to it and beat together again.
8. Spread a batter on the baking tin.
9. Put plums pieces on top pushing them half way into the batter.

10. Bake for about 30-40 min.
11. Meanwhile, whip the two remaining whites until almost stiff. Add a tbsp of sugar and beat again. Add the second spoon of sugar, beat and eventually add the third one until you obtain a smooth meringue frosting. Spread the forsting on the cake, scatter almonds, and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the top becomes gold.

This cake is nothing fancy, but believe me, it is very comforting on a cool fall day with a cup of coffee or lemon tea.