Plum Tart

We have just finished picking all of our Methley Plums (an oriental plum variety) and are looking for homes for them! These tasty, super sweet gems don't last forever, and when it is hot they can burst open, creating quite a mess. The heat causes the sweet flesh inside the plum to expand, which causes the skin to split and the plum to spill juice everywhere (seriously, everywhere). So when we can't sell these Methley Plums in time, we end up throwing quite a few plums out due to this splitting phenomenon, such a waste.

One of our customers owns a restaurant and buys Methley's to make a plum pie. He reminded me that plums are naturally very high in pectin, meaning they don't need a ton of help to thicken once cooked. So I was inspired to take a few of our split plums and make a plum tart! I used Julia Child's recipe for sugar tart crust (from Mastering the Art of French Cooking) for this delicious creation!

Plum Tart

Crust:
1 1/3 cups flour
4 Tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp baking powder
7 Tbsp butter
1 egg (beaten with 1 tsp water)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
1 1/2 quarts of Methley Plums
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp tapioca

Topping:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. To make the crust put the flour, sugar, butter and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Combine these ingredients with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the butter is well incorporated. Add the egg and vanilla to the mixture and knead into a ball with the heel of your hand. Shape the dough into a disk and refrigerate until firm. Once firm fit the dough into a 9 inch tart pan. Line the inside of the tart shell with tin foil and add dry beans or rice to keep the center of the shell weighed down, bake for 5-6 minutes. After the 5-6 minutes remove tin foil and beans or rice and prick holes in the bottom of the tart shell (with a fork) and bake for another 8-10 minutes or until it turns golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool.

To make filling, cut plums off their stone and place into a medium sized sauce pan and add brown sugar and tapioca. Cook for about 15 minutes. Take off heat and place into a food processor to smooth filling. Place filling in the cool shell.

To make the crumble topping melt butter and mix in the remaining ingredients. Sprinkle topping over the tart and bake the tart for an additional 10 minutes, until the crumble topping browns.

This tart would be great for dessert or with coffee for brunch!

French Peach Cake

It is peach season! That means our stand is filled with the sweet smell of peaches, a delightful summer scent! This week we started picking Red Havens (which is a classic peach variety). Red Havens are our first "free-stone" variety, meaning their flesh comes cleanly off of the pit in the middle. Earlier varieties of peaches have a tendency to cling to the stone. Once free-stone peaches arrive, it is prime time for peach cake, cobbler, pie, and jam!

I decided to modify a french peach cake recipe from "The Joy of Cooking" by Irma Rombauer. The cake came out a bit more like cobbler than I would have liked, and was a tad sweet, but still very delicious (which was evidenced by its hasty consumption)!

Peach Cake

Peaches:
2-3 cups of peeled and sliced peaches (or enough to cover the bottom of an 8 inch pie pan)
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbsp flour (for dredging peaches)
A pinch of nutmeg

Cake:
4 Tbsp melted butter
2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine ingredients in the "peaches" section of the recipe and place in an 8 inch pie pan, set aside. In a large mixing bowl combine the sugar, flour and salt in a large bowl and whisk. Beat together the butter, egg yolks, and milk and add to the dry ingredients in the large bowl, mix together and pour the cake batter over the peaches in the pie pan. Bake the cake for about 30 minutes, the cake will turn golden brown. The cake can be served warm for dessert or cold for breakfast in the morning.

Lodi Apple Tart

Lodi apples are our first variety of summer apples to come in. The variety name lodi is pronounced "load-eye." While, according to my father, these apples are an old fashioned variety, no one (and I do mean no one) has ever heard of them, which leads me to believe that these old fashioned apples weren't ever very popular. Perhaps due to my affinity for the under-dog, or things that are less than common, I tend to enjoy lodis. They have a vibrant green color, very tart flesh, and a thin skin. And while these apples are not the best eating apple in the world, they make a mean pie/tart/sauce etc. Lodi's impossibly thin skin disintegrates in the oven, allowing you to avoid the hassle of peeling (which is my least favorite thing about baking with apples).

As with all summer apples, lodis should be kept in the refrigerator. Summer apples have a tendency to become mushy and dry (and generally unpleasant) in the summer heat.

Lodi Apple Tart
6-7 Lodi apples, or enough to make 8 cups of sliced apples
2 Tbsp honey
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbsp butter
1 store bough pie crust

Caramel Sauce (loosely adopted from Martha Stewart)
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of cinnamon (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Core apples and cut into eighths. Pour honey, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg over apples and toss together. In a skillet toss apple mixture and butter in for about 2-4 minutes until butter is melted and apples have softened slightly. Place your pie crust in a pie plate (any size will work) and add warm apple mixture. Place tart in oven for about 25 minutes, watching it carefully and making sure the pie crust doesn't burn. Remove pie and allow to cool slighly. To make caramel sauce place all ingredient for the sauce in a medium sauce pan and bring to a boil, allow the mixture to gently boil for one minute and then remove from heat, spoon over tart and serve warm.

Grilled Golden Plums with Honey Butter Sauce

Grilled stone fruit is one of my favorite things about summer. Grilling peaches, nectarines, or plums not only softens the fruit beautifully but also brings about a deeper sweetness. I decided to grill plums indoors on my grill pan (a wonderful gift given to me by my best friend!) so as to catch all the juice, and to be sure that none of my plums slipped between the grates of the outdoor grill. Seeing as how today was a scorcher, my family requested that these plums be served over vanilla ice cream. If you live anywhere near the Hartford, CT area, I would highly recommend trying Robb's Ice Cream in South Glastonbury, CT.

On the farm we grow small yellow plums called "Early Golds" that proceed the much more common "Shiro" plums. Both of these plums fall under the category of oriental plums; in addition to oriental plums we grow several varieties of Italian plums that ripen in late summer and continue into the fall. A lovely feature of early gold plums is that they are easy to separate from their pits when ripe, making them perfect for the grill. The honey-butter sauce adds both a wonderful saltiness from the butter, and a floral note from the honey.

Grilled Golden Plums with Honey Butter Sauce

1 pint of early gold plums
4 Tbsp salted butter
4 Tbsp honey
1 tsp molasses

Heat grill pan to medium heat. Cut plums in half and place on grill flesh side down for about 4 minutes, then flip to skin side and allow to cook for another 2 minutes. In a small sauce pan place butter, honey and molasses, once the butter has melted whip mixture with a whisk. Serve plums over ice cream and drizzle sauce over the top.

Peach and Raspberry Iced Tea

As long as I can remember my family has been quenching their thirst after a long day of work in the orchard with iced tea made by grandma. With access to an abundance of fruit that would go perfectly with iced tea, I decided to make something delicious to cool us off during this heat wave. Two of my favorite flavored iced teas are raspberry and peach, but I also adore the combination of these two fruits. Another wonderful thing about using both raspberries and peaches in this recipe is that you can certainly use fruit that is less than beautiful, or even over ripe. Raspberries and peaches are not known for their shelf life, so if you have some fruit that has become a little too ripe for your taste and a bit mushy, why not use it to make a refreshing treat?


Peach and Raspberry Iced Tea
1 quart raspberries
3 ripe peaches
1/2 cup sugar
8 cups of water
8 leaves of lemon balm

Wash fruit and slice peaches. Combine fruit and sugar in a medium saucepan and put on high heat until the fruit comes to a boil. Reduce heat and mash fruit (with a potato masher) so that all the juices are released. Bring the mixture in the saucepan back to a boil for about 3 minutes. Place the fruit "sauce" in a cheese cloth hung over a bowl to catch the juice (allow the fruit to hang there for about an hour, so that all juice can be collected, a gentle squeeze at the end might also help to release juice). Place the tea bags in the 8 cups of water and bring to a boil, then remove from heat and add the lemon balm. Combine the juice and tea then chill and enjoy!


This recipe would also be great with other teas, such as green or rooibos.

Blueberry Sauce

Blueberry sauce is a family favorite. It is a velvety delicious topping for pancakes, waffles, ice cream, and just about anything else you can think of! This sauce is also a good way to use up blueberries that are a bit under ripe. Blueberries that are colored pink near the stem end of the berry can be difficult to avoid while picking, and they tend to be tart. A good way to avoid wasting these berries is to incorporate them into baked goods and sauces.

Blueberry Sauce
1 quart blueberries
3 Tbsp sugar
3 Tbsp plum jam
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Combine the ingredients in a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Allow the mixture to come to a boil and then reduce heat, letting the mixture simmer until the berries have completely disintegrated. Serve warm.