Plum Pie - Three Takes

Yes, I'm afraid the family has been living on plum pies these days :)))
First the recipe, to get it out of the way. I believe by now I know it by heart :)
Origin - Labrex

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 180 g milk
• 50 g oil
• 200 g flour
• 200 g sugar
• 5 g baking powder
• vanilla
• plums

Beat the eggs with the sugar, add the oil and the milk. Sift the flour with the baking powder and add to the batter. Spice with vanilla. Pour the batter in a baking dish, arrange the halved plums on top and bake in a preheated oven at 180C until the tooth pick test indicates that it is ready. Preparation time - less than 15 minutes.

And now the story. I read the recipe and decided to try it, as I love plums. I bough half a kg of round plums of a variety that are usually very juicy and sweet. However, mine turned out extremely sour, like wild plums. I baked the pie in my smaller baking dish, that I usually use for pies (24 cm). The pie had a very delicious crisp crust and was super juicy, but the center was a bit sodden and the plums were too sour. I liked it, especially the crust, but it obviously needed improvement.

So, I decided to try it again with a different variety of plums and my bigger baking dish. I bought only a handful of plums as they looked very small and unripe and there weren't any other plums in the supermarket. However obviously appearances are misleading as they turned out to be very sweet. I also added more flour - 240 g. The second pie was perfectly baked, tasted like sponge-cake but the plums were insufficient and it didn't have the crisp crust of the first pie.

Wild flowers bouquet picked from the small stadium we've been jogging lately (have to burn all these pies :))))

Yesterday I made a third attempt - I added only 200 g flour as in the first pie and as many plums as I could stick in and baked it again in the big dish. I also filled the plums with vanilla sugar and the house smelled divinely while baking. This pie has the same sponge-cake structure as the second pie, again without the crisp crust, but is more juicy because of the more plums. Hubby likes it so much that I had to struggle with him to take a few pictures of the baked pie :)))

OK, I think I'm done with plums, maybe I'll try figs or pears next time.

Update: I tried the same recipe today with fruit salad - a peach, a pear and a handful of plums, cut into pieces and spiced with vanilla sugar.

Divine, probably the best so far! However, the pear does stand out as the most sweet and delicious of all, so undoubtedly a pear pie would be a smashing success.

Peaches

Last year I made a few jars of peach jam and it was such a success with my family that this year I'm making it on an industrial scale :)))
Here's the recipe I'm following this year for a batch of 4 small jars:

• 1 kg of peaches, cut into small pieces
• 250 g of plums, cut into small pieces
• 650 g of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of citric acid.

Cut the fruit in a saucepan and cover with sugar. Leave in the refrigerator for 12+ hours. I usually prepare it in the afternoon and leave it for the night. Then (on the following morning) bring the fruit and sugar mixture to boil and leave for 3-4 hours covered with the lid to cool. Add 100 ml water and smash slightly with a hand blender (this is the new element I introduced this year - it gives the jam a smoother texture, which is preferred by the children, who love to spread their bread with butter and jam). Boil the jam until thick enough, add a teaspoon of citric acid and boil for 2-3 more minutes. Pour into clean dry jars while the jam is hot.

These are the jars with peaches only

and these are with peaches and plums. I've got another batch with peaches and plums already I made last night. I'm wondering what else I could try to mix with peaches, as the plums turned such a perfect addition.

The jam is very delicious with the home-made bread I've been baking lately - these small loafs were made following the recipe in Eva Toneva's blog:

And we also tried this a bit eccentric dessert - roasted peaches with oats, served with vanilla ice cream. We should've waited for the peaches to cool more, the warmth of the pulp accentuated the acidity of the fruit and contradicted the sweetness of the oats and the ice cream. Hubby didn't like it, Gaby and I did and Alex didn't even taste it. I'll make another try at it today, replacing the olive oil with butter for better taste and refrigerating the peaches a little before serving.