I know: When will I stop raving about compound butter? Never, probably. (But I’ll bet you could guess that.) The stuff is just too easy to make—and too darned good.

What is compound butter?

If you’ve never made it, compound butter is a great way to add a lot of flavor to a dish with very little effort. It’s generally used as a finishing ingredient or a garnish.

To make compound butter, just soften the butter up, then smoosh in a bunch of ingredients to give it a certain flavor.

For examples of other flavor-packed, buttery goodness, check out my Pecan Scotch Compound Butter and Fresh Herb Compound Butter.

Mmm, cranberries soaked in cognac

For this particular compound butter, you macerate (soak) chopped, dried cranberries in cognac. The cranberries plump up and absorb a little of the liquor. The remaining cognac gets perfumed with cranberry flavor.

Use sweetened dried cranberries for this recipe. (In the U.S., I’m talking about the ubiquitous Craisin.)

Uses for cranberry orange butter

This Drunken Cranberry Orange Butter is great on baked goods (English muffins, croissants, etc.). It’s also a great topping for pancakes and waffles. You can use it as a spread for chicken or turkey sandwiches—or stir it into wild rice before serving.

The sweetness of the dried cranberries is tempered by a generous drizzle of cognac and a spoonful of bright, fresh orange zest.

If you don’t have any cognac on hand, try a little brandy or even dark rum.

Drunken Cranberry Orange Compound Butter

8 Tbls. butter (that’s one stick in the U.S.)
1/4 cup dried sweetened cranberries
2 Tbls. cognac
1 Tbls. orange zest

Yields about 9 Tbls. butter

Macerate the dried cranberries in cognac

Take the butter out of the fridge and set it on the counter to soften. By the time your cranberries are ready, the butter should be soft enough to use.

Chop up the dried cranberries.

Toss them into a small bowl. Drizzle with cognac.

Give them a stir. Let them sit on the counter for about 30 minutes.

Mix up the compound butter

Zest your orange.

I used about a tablespoon, but by all means use more or less depending on your taste.

After about 30 minutes, you should notice that your cranberries have absorbed some of the cognac. Toss the orange zest into the bowl.

Put the butter into a medium-sized bowl. Mash it up with a fork to break it up.

Toss in the contents of your bowl (cranberries, cognac, orange zest).

With a fork, mash the contents of your bowl together.

It will take a minute or two to work the cranberries and zest into the butter—and for the cognac to disappear into the butter.

You’re aiming for a uniform mixture, like this:

Give the butter a taste. This is your chance to correct the seasoning, if you want to. (Add more orange zest, etc., to it if you think it needs it.)

Roll the compound butter up and refrigerate

Put a large piece of wax paper on the counter.

Scoop the butter mixture onto the center of the paper.

Smoosh it into a rough log shape.

Roll the butter up in wax paper.

Twist each end of the wax paper, just like a hard candy wrapper.

Pop the butter into the fridge for at least an hour, or until solid again.

Enjoy your compound butter!

After about an hour, your butter should have solidified.

When you unroll it to slice it, it’ll be generously flecked with orange rind and bits of cranberry.

Enjoy!

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Warning: Baking this cake will fill your kitchen with the irresistible smell of oranges.

This is a slightly modified version of a recipe I saw recently in Saveur. It’s a buttery pound cake shot through with freshly grated orange zest and soaked with sweet orange syrup.

Next time, I’m going to monkey around with the recipe and try it with lemons. Oooh, or maybe blood oranges. Yeah.

Be sure to pour the glaze over the cake when it’s still warm to help the cake absorb the syrup.

A note on creaming butter and sugar together

This is an interesting recipe. Most pound cake recipes call for creaming the butter and sugar together before adding the dry ingredients. This incorporates air into the batter. And more air means a lighter, fluffier cake.

This recipe, however, tells you to use your stand mixer to whisk softened butter into the flour mixture—and THEN add the liquid ingredients.

I was really curious how it would work. The short answer? It was great.

What’s the difference between cake flour and regular flour?

This recipe calls for cake flour. You can substitute regular, all-purpose flour if you don’t have any on hand. Your cake will just be a little coarser in texture.

Cake flour is made from soft wheat, which has less protein and gluten than all-purpose flour, so it’ll produce a finer-textured cake.

I usually use regular old Softasilk from the grocery store. King Arthur Flour’s Queen Guinevere Cake Flour is great, too.

Serve with a steaming cup of tea—or a glass or two of champagne.

Orange Pound Cake

Adapted from Saveur

Cake
13 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened to room temp + more for greasing the pan
3 Tbsp. milk
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. baking powder
2 Tbsp. grated orange zest (1 large orange should be enough)

Glaze
1/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tbls. triple sec, or other orange liqueur

Yields 1 loaf

Before you start

• Be sure to leave the butter out on the counter for maybe 20 minutes to soften up.
• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
• Generously butter a 1-lb. (which is standard) glass loaf pan and set it aside.

Zest the orange

Grab your orange.

Scrape off the zest with a microplane or the smallest holes on a regular cheese grater. Just scrape off the top, orange layer. Avoid the white layer beneath, which is bitter as can be. I usually zest fruit over a piece of wax paper or parchment paper. Makes it easy to corral it all when you need to measure.

Combine the eggs and milk

Put the eggs, milk, and vanilla in a bowl.

Whisk together. Set it aside while you deal with the dry ingredients.

Make the cake batter

Put the flour, sugar, and baking powder in the bowl of your stand mixer. Give them a stir to combine with your whisk attachment, then attach the whole business to your stand mixer.

Toss in the orange zest. Turn your mixer on low and mix until the zest is incorporated.

Cut the butter into tablespoons. (If you’re outside the U.S. and don’t get your butter by the stick, just cut it into 13 even pieces.) Turn your mixer on low. Toss in one piece of butter. Mix until it’s completely incorporated.

Repeat until you’ve added all the butter. As you work the butter into the flour, the mixture will start to resemble little crumbs.

When you’ve added all the butter, your bowl should look about like this:

With the mixer running on low, slowly pour in the egg/milk mixture.

Mix until you’ve added it all and the batter *just* comes together. When it looks like this, stop. (No really, stop.) It will be a little mealy looking. That’s just fine. Don’t overmix it. (Basically, the minute you get flour wet and mix it, it starts to develop gluten, which can make your cake tough.)

Bake the pound cake

Pour the batter out into your prepared pan.

Give it a few swipes with a rubber spatula or a clean finger to even out the surface.

Pop the pan into your preheated, 350-degree oven. Bake for 55 – 60 minutes.

Start checking it after maybe 30 minutes. If the top and/or edges look like they’re browning too fast, slip a piece of aluminum foil over the pan loosely, like this:

Tips for knowing when the cake is done

When it’s done, the cake will be golden brown on top. When you press on it lightly with a finger, the cake will spring back (not stay indented). And, when you insert a toothpick in the middle, it should come out clean.

When the cake is done, cool it in the pan for a few minutes. While it’s cooling, make the glaze.

Make the orange glaze

Put the sugar, orange juice, and orange liqueur in a heavy-bottomed, 1-quart pot.

Set the pot on the stove over medium-high heat. Whisk until the sugar dissolves.

Bring the mixture up to a boil, whisking often. Keep a close eye on it. A 1-quart pot is a short little thing, and this mixture likes to boil over if left unattended.

Boil the mixture until it’s reduced by about half. It should be thick and syrupy.

Set the glaze aside for a minute while you liberate your cake from its pan.

Remove the cake from the pan

Put a few paper towels on the counter. Set a rack on top of them.

After 5-10 minutes, run a butter knife in between the cake and the pan to loosen the sides. Flip the pan over and gently shake the pan a few times to release the cake. Set it gently on the rack. (Be careful, it can crack if you’re too rough with it.)

Mmmm, warm cake…

Poke holes in the cake with a skewer

Grab a wooden skewer. (Or a metal one, or a cake tester, or anything that resembles a long toothpick.)

Poke holes all over the top of your cake. (Insert the skewer about 3/4 of the way through the cake.)

These holes will let the glaze sink into the cake, so make a lot of them.

Now, Saveur recommends brushing the top of the cake with a few layers of the glaze. For the life of me, I couldn’t find my brushes (no, not any of them), so I just poured the glaze over the warm cake and kind of brushed it around with my very clean paw. (Check first to be sure it’s cool enough to handle.)

It worked just fine. Just pour slowly, spreading it around with your hand as you go.

Cool the cake to room temperature before slicing.

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I’m notorious for giving homemade goodies at the holidays—from bags of squishy marshmallows and freshly ground hot chocolate to bottles of velvety Irish Cream.

I’m not usually one to brave the pre-Christmas crush at the malls (and I’m not organized enough to get my shopping done months in advance)—plus, I spend most of my time in the kitchen, anyway. So it kind of works out.

Candied fruit peel is one of those miraculous acts of culinary alchemy.

You take tough, bitter fruit rind that’s packed with oil you could use to polish your furniture, and, thanks to the magic of sugar, transform it into heavenly, fragrant candy.

The result is one part fruit, one part sweet jelly—and totally delicious. They’re like those fruit slices that my grandmother used to love. (You know the ones I mean.) Only a thousand times better.

Candied fruit peel is easier than you might think to make at home.

Basically, you blanch thin strips of peel to remove most of their bitterness, then let them take a leisurely soak in a bubbling sugar bath.

Let them drip dry, then roll them around in sugar until they’re wearing sparkle-y little sweaters.

Leave them out on a rack overnight to cure, and package them up and start handing them around.

That’s it! The process isn’t instant, but it certainly is easy.

To me, the hardest part of this whole process is getting the peel off in nice, presentable pieces. I’ve included detailed instructions on how to do just that.

Should I remove the white pith from the peel?

I say no. Here’s why.

A little unscientific research on the interwebs reveals that there are differing opinions on how much of the papery white pith to remove from the peel.

Some folks recommend scraping off every last bit of it, because it’s bitter. Some say leave the pith on and blanch the peels.

I’m in the latter camp. A quick swim in boiling water soaks out a lot of that bitterness. The simmering sugar bath takes care of the rest. I never cut the pith off, and it’s never been a problem. Plus, it means there’s less prep—and more candy to love.

So, pith on or off: It’s entirely up to you.

This recipe will work with most citrus fruits

I happened to use oranges, but this technique will work with lemon, lime, grapefruit, and blood orange (etc.).

Candied fruit peel + flavored simple syrup = two treats in one

Once you cook the fruit peel, don’t toss the sugar syrup! It’s deeply flavorful and will make a wonderful addition to desserts, cocktails, and tea.

Just pour the sugar syrup through a strainer to capture any errant bits of peel, then toss it in the fridge and use within a month or so.

This recipe calls for equal parts sugar and water, just like regular simple syrup. The addition of the fruit peel and the long cooking time can throw your proportions off, though, which means that your syrup may wind up crystallizing a little—or a lot.

If that happens, just heat the syrup up to liquify it again and you’re good to go.

Candied Orange Peel

3 large oranges
4 cups water
4 cups sugar + 1 cup sugar for coating the peel

Yields about 3/4 – 1 lb. candy, depending on how big your oranges are

Peel the oranges

Grab your oranges. Give them a rinse under cold water, then wipe them dry.

Whack about a quarter-of-an-inch off each end.

You want about this much of the inside showing:

With a sharp paring knife, cut through the peel and into the white pith. Slice through the peel from the top of the orange to the bottom. Don’t cut all the way through the pith and into the fruit.

Make the same cut a few inches over.

Cut a shallow semi-circle into the top of the orange at the edge of the peel to connect the two cuts you just made.

Wiggle your finger under one edge of the peel. Work your finger down under the peel to separate it from the fruit.

Keep going until you’ve removed the whole piece of peel.

Repeat this process until you’ve removed all the peel in nice, whole pieces.

Then do the same with the other oranges.

At this point, if you’re like me, you may start playing with the orange rinds, like they’re Legos. Save the oranges, and do something yummy with them.

Slice each piece of peel into thin strips. Mine were about as wide as a No. 2 pencil, give or take.

Blanch the orange peels

Put a few inches of water in a medium-sized pot and set it on the stove over high heat to boil. (Sidebar: Look for a post soon on how to make an easy homemade polish for your embarrassingly tarnished copper pots.)

When it’s boiling, drop in all the sliced orange peel.

Give the pot a stir to soak them all.

Boil for about 20 minutes.

Drain the peel in a colander. Run under cold water until the peels are cool to the touch (this will take a minute or two). I should note that many recipes have you blanch the peel a few times. I’ve done it that way before, and I honestly don’t see any difference. Once is just fine with me.

At this point, your peels will be floppy and kind of sad looking. That’s just fine. Leave ‘em in the colander while you whip up the sugar syrup.

Simmer the fruit peel in sugar syrup

Put the water and sugar in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed pot over high heat. Whisk to combine. Bring the syrup up to a boil, whisking occasionally until all the sugar melts.

When the sugar syrup is boiling, carefully add the blanched peel to the pot. (Be careful! Boiling sugar is like napalm.)

Give the peel a stir. Lower the heat a little. You want to maintain a rolling (but not furious and bubbling over) boil.

Boil the peel for about 45 minutes like this. (Keep a good eye on the pot after 30 minutes. Your peel may take more or less time, depending on how thick it is.) Your kitchen will start to smell amazing after a few minutes.

The peel is done when it’s translucent.

It should look jellied and clear, like candy:

Drain the orange peel

Grab a baking sheet. Line it with a few paper towels. Set a rack on top of the towels.

A few at a time, fish the peel out of the syrup with a fork.

Set the peel on your prepared rack to drain. Repeat until all the peel is on the rack.

Let the peel drip dry for about 15 minutes.

Roll the fruit peel in sugar & dry out overnight

Remove the sticky rack with the orange peel from the sheet pan and set it aside on the counter. Put a clean rack in its place on the pan. (You don’t want to use the same, sticky one for the finished candy.)

After about 15 minutes, put 1 cup of sugar in a medium-sized bowl. Drop a few pieces of the peel into the sugar. (I do this a few pieces at a time to keep them from clumping together.)

Roll the peel around to coat on all sides.

You want each piece to be completely coated, like this. Give the peel a tap against the side of the bowl to knock off the extra sugar.

Set the sugar-coated peel on the clean rack.

Repeat with the rest of the peel until it’s all coated in sugar. Space them out so they’re not touching. Leave them out just like this, uncovered, to dry out overnight.

Save the syrup!

Don’t forget all that luscious syrup.

Run it through a strainer to remove any bits of peel that might be left in it.

Let it cool to room temperature, then pop it into the fridge and use it up within a month. Depending on how much liquid evaporated, it might solidify a little (or a lot) in the fridge. If that happens, just heat it up to dissolve.

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to enter this week’s giveaway!

The prize is a Nespresso espresso machine! The contest closes on Friday at midnight. Enter to win here.

Cheers!

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There are a few failproof signs of fall for me. Catching a whiff of wild Concord grapes on a cool day in September is one of them.

The heady, slightly musky smell is a sure sign that the weather is well on its way to turning colder. (Do you have grapes growing out back in your yard? Then you know just the intoxicating fragrance I’m talking about.) I was delighted to find them when we were out and about this weekend. I grabbed a few boxes, and practically skipped home to make some jam.

Facts about Concord grapes

Concord grapes are the very same little purple wonders that give Welch’s grape juice its signature flavor.

Concord grapes come from (you guessed it) Concord, a now-sleepy little Massachusetts town that was a hotbed of activity during the Revolutionary war. Concord was home to writers and thinkers like Thoreau and Emerson. And it’s also not that far from where we live in Salem.

They were first planted by Ephraim Wales Bull in 1854. His grapes were hardy, and survived in Concord, where other European varieties did not.

Nowadays, Concord grapes also grow in the wild all over many parts of the Northeast. And when summer turns to fall, you can find them in stores and farmers’ markets if you’re lucky.

A few facts about Concord grapes:

• Concord grapes are a dark purplish black, and are often covered in a light layer of harmless white bloom.
• They’re usually less sweet than traditional grapes.
• Concord grapes are also a “slip-skin” variety of grape (as opposed to “fixed-skin”), which means that they pop right out of their jackets when you give them a little squeeze.
• They’re generally used for juice and jam or jelly, not for eating out of hand because they have big seeds.
• Folks also put them into pies and tarts, like this.

Notes on timing, pectin, and canning

The timing on this recipe is imprecise at best, and will depend on your particular batch of grapes, specifically on how much pectin they had. Fruit loses pectin as it ripens. (And pectin is the stuff that thickens jam.) Concord grapes don’t have a ton of pectin, and each batch will be slightly different. For that reason, this recipe also relies on reducing the jam to thicken it.

The bottom line? Cook the jam for 20 minutes as I indicate, then check it and cook it a little longer if it’s not done. Keep reading, I’ve included just what you need to look for.

Also, this recipe makes about 4 pints, which is a relatively small amount of jam. I just keep it fresh in the fridge, where it will be happy for weeks—if it lasts that long.

For instructions on how to properly can jams and jellies, take a peek at these instructions from the good folks over at Ball.

Concord Grape Jam

3 lbs. concord grapes
3 cups sugar
2 Tbls. lemon juice

Yields about 4 pints

Skin the grapes

This is a pain to do, but it goes faster than you think it will. It’s also kind of gross, but kind of fun. If you have kids in the kitchen, they’ll make perfect little helpers.

Grab a grape. Remove the stem. Give it a gentle squeeze between your thumb and first two fingers. The skin will split, and the meat of the grape will pop right out.

Do this over a bowl, so you can catch the juice that the grapes give off. There’ll be a fair amount of it and you’ll want to toss that into the jam pot with the fruit.

Keep the grapes in a bowl…

…and set the skins aside in another (or just heap them in a pile, like I did). Repeat until you’ve skinned all your grapes.

Puree the grape skins

Once all your grapes are peeled, put the skins in the food processor. (I’m reasonably sure a good blender would work for this, but haven’t tested it.) Toss in 1 cup of the sugar.

Process them on high for a minute or two. The skins will combine with the sugar and completely liquify. This is fun and feels like magic. (Hey, it’s the little things!) It happens almost instantly, and is delightfully shocking to see. Be careful from this point on. This stuff stains like mad.

The mixture will be thick, like this, and flecked with bits of grape skin. That’s just fine. You’re going to strain the mixture eventually. (Give it a taste. It’s heavenly already.)

Cook the Concord grape jam

Put the pureed skins in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the peeled grapes.

Add the lemon juice, as well.

And the remaining 2 cups of sugar.

Stir the whole mess up to combine it well.

Set the pot on the stove over high heat and bring it to a boil. Stir occasionally.

Once it boils, drop the heat low enough so that the jam maintains a simmer—but doesn’t rapidly boil.

Cook like this for 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Keep an eye on the heat. If the jam feels like it’s sticking to the bottom of the pot when you stir, lower your heat a little. (If you keep the heat too high, it will scorch and your jam will have a burnt taste.)

After 20 minutes, your jam will have thickened and reduced, and should look about like this:

Strain the jam

Before you start, grab a plate and put it in the freezer. You’ll need it to test the jam in a few minutes.

Set a large, heatproof bowl on the counter. Fit a strainer on top. Pour the jam through the strainer, into the bowl. Be very careful when you do this. It may be delicious, but boiling hot jam is like napalm.

With a spatula, push the jam through the strainer. Keep smooshing it until most of the jam is in the bowl, and you’re left with a lump of seedy pulp in the strainer, like this:

How to test the jam for doneness

This is the part where the recipe gets a little imprecise. Now, at this point, your jam should be pretty thick. But the question is: Is it thick enough? Let’s find out. (A note for my buddy Jeff over at A Dork and His Pork: Yes, I switched spatulas at this point.)

Grab that plate that you just stashed in your freezer a few minutes ago. It should be very cold to the touch. If it’s not, stick it back in until it is.

When your plate is cold, drop a spoonful of hot jam on it in a little puddle. Pop the plate back into the freezer for 1 minute. (Yep, just one minute will do the trick.)

After 1 minute, yank the plate out. Tip the plate on its side. The jam should stay where it is in a blob, not run down the plate. Next, scoot the jam a little with a finger. The jam should have a skin that wrinkles up, like this:

If your jam passes both these tests, it’s done! If it’s still too thin, take the strained jam and simmer it for another few minutes. Then test it again. Repeat until it’s thick enough.

Jar, serve, and enjoy!

Ladle your warm jam into clean, sterilized jars. Let them cool to room temperature, then cover them and pop them in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Peek into a readers’ kitchens as they make this jam

Update—October 13, 2009—A special thanks to Sheldon, who made a huge batch of this jam from Concord grapes in his own yard. He was kind enough to send me the video he and his son made.

Here’s what he wrote:

“This is a video my son helped me make – turning 12 pounds of the Valiant strain of Concord Grapes into jars of jam. I found that every pound of grapes took one cup of sugar (and a bit of lemon juice) yielding one 250 ml jar of jam. It wasn’t too sweet…in fact just a bit tart, but really is one of the best jams or jellies I’ve ever made.

A very special thank you to Jessie at the Hungry Mouse for her wonderful, easy to follow and well illustrated recipe. Here is a link to that page, which I had opened the entire time I was making the jam.”

And here’s his video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh, he also canned it in a traditional water bath. Some of you have asked how that works out, and it looks like it’s just fine! He didn’t add any additional ingredients (no Certo or Surejell).

Update—October 14, 2009—Thanks also to Charlene from crazedparent, who shared this picture of her jam-making adventure.

Update—October 20, 2009—And thanks to Jeff from A Dork and His Pork (seriously, one of my favorite food blogs, ever) for his picture of jam from this recipe. That’s his homemade bread, too.

Cheers!

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I have to admit: Until recent years, I was scared to death of these little things.

Are you kidding me: “Prune” in the same sentence with “dessert?” No, thank you. Prune plums are tiny and mean looking. If you don’t know any better, they look like they taste terribly sour.

And, they have a pit.

Call it leftover 8-year-old-fear-of-weird-food rearing its head in my (questionably) grown-up self, but they never seemed to belong in anything that I would even think of ingesting. Much less in dessert. I mean, to sum how I used to feel: Yuck.

I didn’t get over it until well into my late twenties. And I’m still kicking myself that it took me that long.

In recent years, prune plums have become one of my fondest fall darlings. When baked, they’re sweet, sticky, and jammy—and make a perfect filling for a bunch of different desserts.

In this crumble, they’re nestled under a blanket of buttery, crunchy oatmeal topping that’s dotted with sliced almonds.

About prune plums

Prune plums have a brief season, and are around for only a few weeks in the early fall. (Look for them when you start to see pumpkins.)

They’re about the size of an egg and have dark purple or blue skin. Even when ripe, the inside flesh is yellow. When baked, the color from the skins seeps out and turns the cooked fruit a lovely ruby tone.

When buying them, choose plums that are fairly firm—not super soft. Look for smooth skin, and avoid any that have a wrinkle-y or loose skin. They’ll likely be mealy. Ripen prune plums on the counter, then store in the fridge.

I was so excited when they finally showed up at Haymarket, Boston’s biggest public farm market, a few days ago.

If you can’t find prune plums, this crumble is delicious with regular plums, peaches, and even apples. It’s one of those messy, rustic desserts that is great eaten on its own, or with big scoop of ice cream (ginger is my favorite with this).

Italian Prune Plum Crumble

Filling
1 lb. Italian prune plums, pitted and quartered
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
1 1/2 Tbls. flour
2 Tbls. Chambord (or other raspberry/black raspberry liqueur)

Topping
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
pinch of salt
1/3 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup sliced almonds
6 Tbls. butter, cut into small cubes

Makes 1 9-inch round dessert

Grease a 9-inch glass pie pan lightly with oil or butter and set it aside. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees.

How to deal with the prune plums

Grab your prune plums.

Cut each plum in half.

Remove the pits and stems (and the little hard, knobby thing that the stem is attached to).

Prune plums are easy to pit because they’re a “freestone” fruit—as opposed to their larger, more difficult “clingstone” cousins.

Cut the plums into quarters. Leave the skins on. They melt into the filling as the crumble bakes.

Repeat with the rest of your plums until they’re all pitted and quartered. Put the plum quarters into a medium-sized mixing bowl.

Make the plum tart filling

Toss in the brown sugar and flour.

Add the Chambord (or other raspberry liqueur).

Mix gently until all the ingredients are combined. It won’t seem like it at first, but that little bit of liqueur—plus the juice from the plums—is enough to turn all the dry ingredients into a thick, sugar-y paste.

Transfer the filling to your greased pie pan. Be sure to scrape out any sugar that’s sticking to the bowl.

Your filling should almost fill the pan to the top.

Make the crumb topping for the tart

Put the flour, white sugar, brown sugar, sliced almonds, oatmeal, and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer (or a large mixing bowl, if you’re mixing by hand).

Toss in the butter. (By small cubes, I mean cut the butter about the size of a regular die—or one of those little square Laughing Cow cheese bites.)

Mix on medium-high to break up the butter and incorporate it with the rest of the ingredients. (If you’re not using a stand mixer, squeeze the butter and dry ingredients together with your hands repeatedly to soften the butter a little and smoosh them together.)

You’re aiming for a coarse meal texture.

Like this (odd-sized bits of butter are just fine):

Assemble the crumble!

Sprinkle the crumb topping over the plum mixture.

Try to spread it evenly, but don’t make yourself nuts. This is a rustic dessert. It’s OK if bits of plum are poking through. In fact, the juice they release when baking will help form a pretty pattern on the top of the finished dessert.

Bake, serve, and enjoy!

Pop the pan into your pre-heated 375-degree oven. Bake for about 45 minutes.

You want the topping to be brown and the filling to bubble up on the edges.

Yank it out of the oven when it looks about like this:

Cool it on the counter and serve warm or at room temperature. (It’s good cold, too, but you really don’t get the full flavor of the fruit that way.)

Enjoy!

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