Bavarian Plum Cake (Zwetschgendatschi)

One of the best things about summer is the fruit that is available.  Summer fruit is plentiful, varied and features my personal favourites, mangoes and cherries.

Summer has sadly passed here for another year and we are into early autumn.  We are still getting some nice days, but the sun is rising much later, and the mornings and evenings are markedly cooler.

Plums are stone fruit that are at their peak in summer.  The last of the plums are still in the stores, so I decided to seize the day and buy some plums to make a recipe that I have longed to make since last August from Gesine Bullock-Prado's G Bakes! website.  The recipe is for Zwetschgendatschi, a Bavarian plum cake.   I would describe this cake as being more like a tart, as it comprises a pie dough base topped with nothing but sliced plums and sugar.

Some versions of Zwetschgendatschi feature a yeasted dough base instead of the pie dough, but personally, as a lover of pie over bread, I choose the pie dough base.  It is the easiest dough in the world to make - you just wazz everything up in the food processor, and the dough is pressed, not rolled, into the tart pan.  For the record, I left out the condensed milk and added ice water instead.

For the filling, I was unable to obtain damson plums, so I used dapple dandy pluots (yeah, crazy name!).  I also could not get the hang of separating the halves so that they still hang together at one end, like Gesine suggested, because I had to twist the two halves to get the stones out, which separated the halves completely.

I was pretty pleased with the end result:

This tart is not particularly sweet - in fact, it is slightly on the tart side.  However, I thought it was delicious, especially given how simple it was to make.

It is a long weekend for Labour Day here in Melbourne, so I am looking forward to relaxing and doing not much.  Have a great weekend folks.