Hello my friends! This week I wanted to share with you a tradition of ours: as us Germans call it, “Kaffee und Kuchen” i.e. “coffee & cake” (except that I don’t drink coffee so its more of a tea & cake kind of event). Anyways, we basically always have a slice of cake (or pie in this case) with a hot beverage every afternoon after a snooze in the sun. You see, after laying on a lounge chair for 3 hours, eating a piece of cake is the best way to recuperate from such a tiring afternoon. 😉
  
All jokes aside, its delicious and every time my German relatives come visit I get to try a new cake recipe so I’m not complaining. This time it was a plum pie. To be honest, I feel like everybody has their own little twist on the recipe so I decided to just go with the traditional version.
Ingredients
For the base:Â
- 250g of butter
- 500g of flour
- a pinch of salt
- some water
For the filling:
- 1.5kg of plums (or another fruit in season)
- 80g of brown sugar
- 50g of butter
- a pinch of flour
- a handful of flaked almonds
Now for the instructions: Pour the flour with the pinch of salt in a bowl and gradually add chunks of butter (make sure its at room temperature) while mixing the batter. Use your hands, its the best utensil in this case! While you do that, add a little bit of water (3 to 5cl). Once the batter is nice and smooth, roll it into a ball and wrap it in cling film. Then leave it to rest for at least 2 hours.
  
After the 2 hours are up, turn on the oven at 210°C. Then wash and cut the plums in half to remove the stones. Grab a non stick pie dish (about 30cm of diameter) and roll out the batter. For lack of a better word, “prick” the batter with a fork to prevent it from rising.
For the filling, sprinkle the brown sugar and then lay the plums on top, covering the whole surface of the batter evenly. Then shove the dish in the oven for about 45 minutes. Dont worry about the fruit juice, it will caramelise with the brown sugar and it’ll end up being deeeelicious.
Once perfectly cooked, sprinkle your flaked almonds all over the pie and serve with a side of whipped cream or ice cream. The best afternoon pick me up in any circumstances!!!
Oh and this tea set is from Villeroy and Boch. Its really old but I LOVE that everything is matching including the tablecloth and napkins! And the pond in the background with the sound of flowing of water from the fountains makes this setting so peaceful (minus the 200+ bees that come to drink! But at least we’re contributing to the local production of honey! haha P.S. bonus points for those who spotted the bee in the picture above 😉 )
Have a good week my dears!