Wholesome food, dirty oven- my take on a plum tart.

   While walking through a local produce store I found myself next to a bin of fruit. I reached my hand in, and plucked out a firm and lovely plum. It was obviously not ripe yet, but they were so lovely I ended up with 12 of them. I took them home with intention of family to eat them out of hand. Little girl on the other hand seemed to have the attention to complain about how awful plums are. I now had 10 plums and only I was going to be eating them. Without a doubt they would go bad before I had a chance to eat them, so it was time for a plan B. Plum tart!

I first started out with a recipe from Ina Garten

But as you know already, I can’t follow a recipe to save my life. Faster than I was able to chop almonds I had adapted this recipe into something entirely different. The end result was a rustic tart made with wheat flour, oats and almonds and sweetened with honey. All the favors worked well together, and the wholesomeness made it a dessert that isn't horrible for you.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees

Crumb topping:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup oats
2/3 cup almonds diced fine
2/3 cup honey
1 egg
1 stick cold unsalted butter cut into pea size pieces

 Combine flour, oats, almonds, honey and egg and mix either by hand or with a stand mixer. Gradually add butter a little bit at a time until mixture is just combined and has a slight crumble. Because of the use of honey instead of sugar this mixture will be damper then most dough for tarts and crumbles.

Press dough into a 9 ½ spring form pan, or into a well-greased tart pan. Reserve about 1/3 of the mixture for topping.

Filling:

About 7-8 Plums cut into 8ths

I was playing around a lot with how to cut a plum without mangling it beyond recognition and I found the easiest way for me was to cut all the way around the plum into 8ths, and then use my knife to pop the first little segments out. After that it was easier to cut away from the stone and get the plum pieces out intact.

Arrange plum wedges around pan starting on the outside and working your way in. Eventually it will look like a pretty flower, or at least tidy. Then cover up your masterpiece with more dough evenly spread over the plum mixture like you are rolling over the Mona Lisa with a paint roller.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes. This oven is a little bit off on temperature being that it was manufactured by General Motors somewhere around 1950 so a good way to tell if your tart is done is if the plums are bubbling, the crust is golden and your house gives off that fresh from the oven baked good smell.

Photo of very old, very dirty oven baking tart above in the event you didn't believe an oven that old could still exist and work. The clock is always set to 5 past 7 although the second hand still ticks around the clock face, the time never changes, and you can tell how small it is by the fact that the pan you are looking at is a 9 1/2 inch spring form pan! But there is an even smaller oven below this one so I don't find I miss the cooking space very often.