swetschkuchen - german plum cake

swetschkuchen - german plum cake

• 3 Mar 2014

It's been a drizzly old start to autumn in Sydney - perfect weather for baking. Last weekend when I was home in Brisbane, I noticed some lovely looking plums lurking in the fruit bowl. I hunted through some recipe books before finding this recipe for swetschkuchen in Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food. I've never made a swetschkuchen or zwetschgenkuchen before, but I like anything with plums, so I thought I'd give it a try. As there were only a few of us at home, I halved the recipe and made 6 individual cakes rather than 1 large one.



The cakes took no time to make in the food processor but I did strike a few issues with my mini versions.



The cakes were completely cooked after 20 minutes, long before the plums were ready. After 10 minutes, I lowered the oven temperature to 325°F/170°C and covered the cakes with baking paper to stop them burning. In the end it took about 40 minutes for the plums to cook through. If I were to make mini-German plum cakes again, I'd thinly slice and sugar the plums first to speed up the cooking process.



Here's the original Claudia Roden recipe for you.

German Plum Cake (Swetschkuchen)
Ingredients  
125g (4½ oz) caster sugar 
175g (6 oz) self-raising flour (or plain flour with 1/2 tsp baking powder)
75g (3 oz) cold unsalted butter 
1 small egg, lightly beaten 
1 tbs cognac 
750g (1½ lb) plums, pitted and cut in half 
Icing sugar 

Method
Mix half the sugar with the flour. Cut the cold butter into pieces and rub into the flour and sugar mix. Mix in the beaten egg (you may not need to use all the egg) and the cognac and work very briefly with your hand - just enough to mix it together - adding a little flour if it's too sticky. Take lumps of pastry and press into a 25cm/10 inch baking tray or tart pan. 

Arrange the fruit, tightly packed, cut side up on top of the pastry and sprinkle the remaining sugar on the plums. Bake in a preheated 375°F/190°C oven for 50 minutes or until the pastry is golden and the plums are very soft. The sugar draws out the plum juices, which run into the pastry and makes it rise up between the plums so that these are embedded in the light pastry. Serve hot or cold sprinkled with icing sugar.

My family don't have a sweet tooth, so I tried to reduce the sugar in the recipe. Don't! The plums I used were mouth puckeringly tart so I had to add a little extra sugar to the cooked tarts to ensure they were edible. Once I did that, I enjoyed my little plum tart with a nice cup of tea.  I'm thinking it's probably time to make some tangy plum jam before the plum season ends even if I'm a Vegemite on toast girl.

I hope you enjoyed your weekends. See you all again next week,

Jillian

P.S My recipe for blood orange tea cakes on decor8 can be found here if you're looking for more inspiration.