Zwetschgenkuchen
Sep. 19th, 2011 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuThey're in the oven. Over on FB, a friend asked for the recipe. So:
The dough is my basic butter-cookie dough, in its pareve form:
Cream together 1 lb softened margarine, 1 egg, 2 1/2 cups sugar, and a splash of vanilla.
Slowly add 4 cups flour with the mixer.
Then add 2 more cups flour by hand. (Do not try to show off how powerful your mixer is, unless you want to buy a new one.)
Spray 4 8"or 9" round pans with Pam. By hand, smoosh out the dough to make the crust. You will probably have some dough left over; you can use it to make cookies or apfel-nudel sharlet (which I'll post another time.)
Put the crusts in a 350-degree preheated oven for 15 minutes to firm them up.
Wash and pit about 5 lbs of zwetschgen. In this country, they go by the name of "Italian prune plums." For extra fun, use an authentic German Pflaumenentkerner. If you have time, you might macerate the zwetschgen by putting them in a pot with a little sugar and stirring over low heat.
Remove the crusts from the oven, give them a minute or two to cool, then arrange the plums in the crusts. Ideally, you want to open each plum into quarters, forming overlapping concentric circles of fruit. If necessary, rip the quarters of some of the plums apart to insert into any gaps that may form.
Generously sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
Return to the oven for another 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on how "done" you like it.
Do not serve until the first night of Rosh ha-Shanah.
Optional but traditional step: While your family and guests rave about how wonderful this is, kvetch about how disappointed you are with the way the kuchen came out this year, and say that you'll never be able to make it as well as your mother and Oma used to.
These freeze well as long as you do it gradually. Start by putting them in the refrigerator for 12 hours or so, and then transfer to the freezer.
You can also make this on a cookie sheet, if you prefer.
The dough is my basic butter-cookie dough, in its pareve form:
Cream together 1 lb softened margarine, 1 egg, 2 1/2 cups sugar, and a splash of vanilla.
Slowly add 4 cups flour with the mixer.
Then add 2 more cups flour by hand. (Do not try to show off how powerful your mixer is, unless you want to buy a new one.)
Spray 4 8"or 9" round pans with Pam. By hand, smoosh out the dough to make the crust. You will probably have some dough left over; you can use it to make cookies or apfel-nudel sharlet (which I'll post another time.)
Put the crusts in a 350-degree preheated oven for 15 minutes to firm them up.
Wash and pit about 5 lbs of zwetschgen. In this country, they go by the name of "Italian prune plums." For extra fun, use an authentic German Pflaumenentkerner. If you have time, you might macerate the zwetschgen by putting them in a pot with a little sugar and stirring over low heat.
Remove the crusts from the oven, give them a minute or two to cool, then arrange the plums in the crusts. Ideally, you want to open each plum into quarters, forming overlapping concentric circles of fruit. If necessary, rip the quarters of some of the plums apart to insert into any gaps that may form.
Generously sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
Return to the oven for another 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on how "done" you like it.
Do not serve until the first night of Rosh ha-Shanah.
Optional but traditional step: While your family and guests rave about how wonderful this is, kvetch about how disappointed you are with the way the kuchen came out this year, and say that you'll never be able to make it as well as your mother and Oma used to.
These freeze well as long as you do it gradually. Start by putting them in the refrigerator for 12 hours or so, and then transfer to the freezer.
You can also make this on a cookie sheet, if you prefer.