A Plate Full

These little babies are Pluot plums.  Beautiful mottled skin, light green, amber, and well, plum.  Their flesh is this intense pink/red, full of juice, tart, sweet, so good to eat.  They’ve never made it in my kitchen long enough to cook with.  And that’s okay.  I think that should be the policy from now on.  Just eat them.  ‘Cause you see those little innocent looking things?  Those plums are a nasty piece of work!  Here’s the deal…

Most of you normal people out there will bake with the skins on your plums, right?  Thought so.  Well, I don’t like the skin on fruits cooked.  Weird, I know, but there it is.  I decided I wanted to make a plum cake with these pluots.  How pretty would that be, all vanilla cakey and sugar crunchy edges, with the brilliant plums studded throughout.  I can see it now.  I began.  First up, a quick dunk in boiling water to remove the skins, no problem.  So, you know when you do the boil thing to remove skins that it makes a thin layer of the fruit kinda slippery and loose, right?  Well, I guess cause these were so ripe, it was more than a thin layer, they were slippy and goopy, hard to hold, and my hands were getting covered in brilliant pink …stuff.  As I tried to halve them and remove the stone, of course, that wasn’t happening.  Tenacious little buggers.  I had to slice around the stone to remove the flesh.  I have to tell you, sharp knives and peeled plums is not a match made in heaven.  But, I prevailed!  Behold!

You see that goop smeared on the side of the bowl…..times ten all over my hands.  I had to scrape it off, like, well…anyway.  I thought that the fruit was so juicy that it would make putting it in a cake difficult.  All that juice and high altitude could make for a very soggy cake.  So, brilliant idea, I’ll do a sort of upside down cake.  Thinking the sugar would help the juice thicken, the cake would be able to rise unencumbered, it worked great in my head.

Long story short, baked it off, turned it over……..not so much.  Not even meh.  It was a little disturbing looking even.  Here you go..

Yeah, I thought so too.  It’s almost a little creepy.  I did taste it (of course I did) and it didn’t taste bad. It was good.  But all in all, not a lot of bang for your buck, if you know what I mean.  So, no recipe, unless you request it (weirdos), and this heartfelt advice.  Just pick them up and eat them!