Friday, July 20, 2012

Plum Brake

Today, with the remaining viable plums left in my plum bowl I ventured forth to make plum bread. Did it turn out as good as the pies? Let's find out.

First off, here is the recipe that I used. Someone's mother-in-law clearly has access to plums consistently enough to have a recipe for turning them into bread. Not that I mind. I'm really quite grateful.

Once again I found myself staring down at a bowl full of plums with a knife in my hand and an empty measuring cup beside me. However, gather one cup of chopped plum is much easier than gathering five cups, so that part actually went by much faster today (it still remained the longest part of the process).

Luckily I didn't have any issues with the recipe until I got to the next step (Not step 1 of the recipe. I'm quite capable when it comes to preheating ovens). It told me to toss the cups of juicy plum chunks with a tablespoon of flour. Unfortunately, flour turns into a paste when it hits liquids, and plum juices are no exception. Tossing was out of the question. Maybe the mother-in-law uses magical flour, or she uses less juicy plums, but I had to stir to coat the chunks in flour, and even then, it was still pretty much just plums lightly touched by flour goop.

Thankfully that was the only trouble I ran into. If you notice, the recipe asks for 1/3 cup of plain yogurt. Seeing as how Smith's only sells plain yogurt in a large tub, clearly more than 1/3 cup. As I sat looking at this recipe the other day, I got to thinking (A dangerous pastime. I know). I figured that the yogurt probably simply served as a moistening agent. Since I wasn't going to be eating plain yogurt for funsies after finishing with this recipe, I decided to gamble. And by gamble, I was pretty sure it would work. I just got a large thing of strawberry yogurt and used that instead, giving the bread a slight hint of strawberry. And when I say bread, it really is more of a cake, but bready enough to count as bread. Now, I wanted to know that this bread included strawberries, but unfortunately the pink of the yogurt didn't come through in the batter. So what did I do? Yeah, I added food coloring (Rose Petal Pink, if you must know).

In hindsight I would have nixed the parchment paper lining my pan and would have been fine with non-stick spray. I feel like contact with the metal of the pan helps crustify the sides of the bread, and that didn't really happen with the parchment paper. Even I have to learn things sometimes.

The bread in the oven. Very gloopy.

Yeah, I might have stuck my phone briefly into the oven to get a close-up of the bread goop (with brown sugar topping). Not the wisest choice I've made, but far from the worst choice. All's well that ends well.

As you can see, the sides didn't crust up like normal bread, but that didn't stop it from tasting good.

I probably could have let it cool longer, but I get antsy. For my haste, a corner broke off, but I guess that was a sign that I should sample it immediately.

Verdict: Tart but not overpowering. Soft, delicious, a hint of strawberry, rose petal pink, and the crustiness of the top (with the brown sugar) more than makes up for a lack of crustiness on the sides. Another baking experiment to throw into the success pile.

And "Brake" in the title is the combo of Bread and Cake. Sorry if you were confused all the way to the end.


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