Plum Torte
Summer entails stone fruit season! With the influx of fruits, I found a few plums going really sad and soft — but this plum torte didn’t let down at all. This recipe is generously adapted from NYT Cooking’s Marian Burros: I cut down the sugar and threw on some extra lemon at the end. As an incredibly fast and straightforward recipe, the torte base has been my go-to during this entire summer for any overripe peaches, apricots, and pluots in the house.
One batch of purple plums was particularly soft, so I ended up pureeing them with some strawberries to make a jam. With the jam, I swirled it into the torte batter but placed it in a tart pan (essentially a torte-bakewell tart-pie sitch). Because of the stark contrast in colors, the swirls created a beautiful marble pattern (below photo). I would definitely recommend this jam swirl to rescue any fruits that are already beyond a slice-rescuable state.
Ingredients:
60g granulated sugar
113g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
120g all purpose flour, sifted while weighed
1 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
2 eggs, room temperature
5-6 pitted plums, cut into 1 inch slices
1 lemon
Steps:
Heat oven to 330º F.
Cream sugar and butter in a bowl. Using a spatula, thoroughly mix in flour, baking powder, salt, and eggs, be careful not to over mix.
With a buttered 8-inch cake pan, pour in batter. Place the plums slices in circles around the pan, approximately 2-3 circles. Zest the lemon over the plums.
Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. If the cake begins to brown too quickly or the sides rise faster than the center, cover with a sheet of aluminum paper and continue to bake.
Remove from oven and cool. If desired, squeeze the juice of 1/4 of the lemon over the cake. Serve with vanilla ice cream.