Skip to main content
Wellspent Market founder Jim Dixon has been writing about food and restaurants for Willamette Week for a long time. He wants our readers to eat well, and he shows them how with the recipes he creates just for us by using simple cooking techniques and easy-to-find ingredients.
We’ve got a tree full of plums in the backyard, so I’m always looking for recipes to use them up. I found this one, from Polina Chesnakova’s book Everyday Cake, in an old online version of The Seattle Times. It borrows from the various French egg-and-fruit desserts like clafoutis, flaugnarde, and far breton that combine a thin, lightly sweetened batter with fresh fruit at its seasonal peak.
It’s perfect for a lazy baker like me. Make the batter in the food processor, pour it over the fruit, and put it in the oven. While the original recipe calls for about 3 cups of fruit, since we’ve got so many plums, I used almost twice as much.
Recipe
- 3/4 cup flour
- 2/3 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons
- ½ teaspoon kosher style sea salt
- 5 eggs
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 2 tablespoons apple brandy, cognac or rum (or any booze you like; you can also skip the booze altogether)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3-5 cups plums, pitted and quartered
- Butter for greasing the pan
Put the flour, sugar and salt in the food processor and pulse to combine. Add the eggs, blitz until smooth, then add the milk, cream, liquor and vanilla; blitz again until combined. If you have the time, resting the batter in the refrigerator for a few hours allows the flour to more fully absorb the liquids.
Generously butter a 9-inch baking dish or skillet, then sprinkle a tablespoon or so of sugar over it. Spread the fruit in an even layer across the bottom, then gently pour in the batter.
Sprinkle a little more sugar on top and bake at 350°F for about an hour or until the top is well browned and puffed up. It’ll deflate as it cools. Serve at room temperature.
