plum tart

Last Saturday we invited a friend over for lunch. We had very little in the house but I managed to put together a tasty menu:

appetizer: homemade crackers with a tomato salsa made from our own garden's heirloom tomatoes

main dish: pasta with mushrooms and chorizo in a tomato/red wine sauce

dessert: homemade plum tart (with plums from the garden) and homemade frozen yogurt

It was kind of a busy morning but I managed to get everything done before 1pm. I started the frozen yogurt the night before so it would be ready for lunch. I don't have an ice cream maker and I just put the mix into a metal cake pan and put it in the freezer, giving it a stir every couple of hours.

The plum tart was a new one for me and I thought I'd share it here, just in case you have an abundance of plums! I just made this recipe up, based on my experience making fruit tarts.

plum tart

crust
1 1/2 cups flour
pinch salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup butter (plus 2 tablespoons) or 125 grams
1/2 tsp vanilla (I forgot it this time)
1 tablespoon water

(I added lime zest to the crust this time)

filling
plums
sugar
cinnamon (optional)

directions
Make pie crust according to the instructions here.

Pit and halve the plums. I took some of the mushier plums and mixed them with a little sugar and cinnamon in a saucepan to make a plum compote. Even though the plums were sweet to eat, I found that they turned quite acidic during the cooking process, so if you don't like tart tarts, you may want to go a little heavy on the sugar, in which case I would add a little water to the mix. Let compote cool down. Spread the plum compote over the rolled out crust in your pie pan. Then put all the halved plums over the compote layer (you may want to toss them in sugar first, to up the sweetness factor).

You may want to sprinkle more sugar on the plums at this point. Throw it in the oven (375 F or 190 C) for 30+ minutes until the crust is golden brown and the plums are cooked and bubbling. A great all-purpose fruit tart recipe!