German Plum Kuchen- Pflaumenkuchen is a summer recipe that uses fresh plums in season. This German recipe is traditional from Transylvania and it is easy to make and delicious.
I love this recipe. While plums are still in season, this recipe should be on the list of everyone who loves baking bars and using seasonal ingredients. The recipe comes from Transylvania and it is specific to the Saxon(German) cuisine.
Easy to make and incredible delicious, the German Plum Kuchen is a little treasure, great for a lazy Sunday afternoon snack, or dessert.
To make this recipe, I recommend the Italian plums for a more traditional taste. They are smaller and less juicy than American plums that I find, in my opinion, a little too big for this recipe.
When I was growing up, bars or cookies used to be baked in Transylvania only over the weekends and served during the week as snacks or special occasions. The tray or the platter of desserts would sit quietly in the pantry waiting for a guest to come visit my grandma.
She would then make coffee and serve desserts with it. (Click here to learn how to make Turkish coffee, the way Romanians still like to drink their coffee).
Click here to PIN this tasty recipe so you can make it later!
I love to share old recipes that come from my family or from the places I grew up. I think that old recipes are teaching us about old times, they provide a window into everyday life long ago.
You can learn from them what people ate, what utensils they used in the kitchen, what ingredients they could buy in the stores, what cultural and culinary influences shaped them.
Sometimes you can also learn about their social lives, because handwritten recipes frequently include the name of the person from whom the writer got the recipe. Such recipe collections are important parts of family traditions, but also of broader cultural traditions. They tell us stories of a vanished world and connect us to our past and our roots.
Here are some more recipes from Transylvania:
Traditional Saxon Potato Tarragon Soup
This dessert is very simple. It has a shortbread crust on the bottom and fresh fruits on top. Bread crumbs are sprinkled over the plums to absorb the excess juice.
There is not a ton of sugar in these bars and I am not going to pretend that it is a fancy recipe. The ingredients are accessible and easy to put together and the result is delicious.
Tip: The dough can be made in a food processor! If you don’t have one, Amazon is a good place to start looking for a cheaper, reliable one! It is a life saver in the kitchen!
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Interested in more dessert bars? Here you have the link for more recipes.
German Plum Kuchen- Pflaumenkuchen
Ingredients
- 2 cups/8oz/250 g all purpose flour
- 1 pinch baking powder
- 1/2 cup/4.23oz/120g granulated sugar
- 1 stick/4.23oz/120g unsalted butter
- 1 large egg
- 2.2lb/1kg plums
- 1 tablespoon sweet graham crackers crumbs
- powder sugar to sprinkle on top of the bars
Instructions
Sieve the flour together with the baking powder and sugar.
Work the butter into the mixture until it looks like bread crumbs.
Add the egg.
Mix to make a dough. Cover in plastic wrap and let it rest for an hour.
Tip: Use a food processor to mix the ingredients together.
In the meantime wash and dry the plums, cut them in halves and remove the pits.
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.
Use an 8x8 inch pan. Spread the dough on the bottom of the pan and place the plums on top of the dough in dense rows. Sprinkle them with the bread crumbs and bake at 180c for 40-45 mins. (the dough has to be baked, plums should still sweat)
Let the pan cool, then cut the bars in squares and serve. Sprinkle powder sugar on top if you prefer.
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