Going plum crazy

Baked delicacies include showstopper of a tart, a delicious cake and an easy crumble

I was probably 30 before I baked a plum. To me, a plum was always something you ate like a peach, in summer, standing over the sink to make sure the juices didn’t ruin your shirt. And like cherries, plums oxidize quickly when sliced, so no-cando in fresh fruit tarts. I whipped up plenty of plum pudding, a Christmas dessert with nary a plum in sight.

But most French tarts I made called for poached fruit, like pears and apricots that went directly from the can to the flan, so to speak. So, for me, plums were always for eating, not heating.

But then watching a cooking demonstration by Montreal chef and baker extraordinaire James MacGuire, I had a sort of plum epiphany. MacGuire’s menu included a tart made with plums, Italian plums to be specific, the oval, deep-purple ones that came out in late summer. He baked them in a puff pastry shell lined with almond cream, and he didn’t arrange them like most obsessive compulsive pastry chefs. He just tossed them with flour and a bit of sugar, plunked them in there, and straight into the oven.

In combination with other fruit or all alone, plums make terrific pies, cakes, buckles and crumbles. Their tartness, smoothed by sweetness, and intense fruitiness results in delicious ice cream, sorbet, granité and especially jam. For a quick dessert, take a slice of brioche, butter generously, top with plums, fill each cavity with a spoonful of marzipan, sprinkle with sugar and broil until the juices run. For something even easier, sauté the fruit with a bit of sugar and pour over mascarpone or Greek yogurt, top with a drizzle of best olive oil and a few toasted pistachios, and finish a pinch of sea salt and raw sugar. Yum!

Plums can play the savoury card, too, in salsas, chutneys and salads, especially when goat’s cheese is involved. Don’t hesitate to add them to antipasto plates, as well as charcuterie and cheese platters.

Chances are you’ll spot plums from the world over in your supermarket any time of year, but now’s the time to capture the local fruit at its peak. To preserve these babies a little longer, plums can be dried or frozen (remove the stones first) or bottled in sugar syrup, flavoured with a star anise, a cinnamon stick or a vanilla bean. Poached plums work very well in baked fruit tarts and they make a great topping for rice pudding.

Here are two of my favourite plum recipes. The first, a showstopper of a tart, the second an easy crumble, that shows off this luscious fruit at its best.