Click here to view recipe.
Plum Crisp
I have three plum trees – one ancient and two fairly young ones. They are not the dark Italian plums that are all the rage – instead their flesh is yellowish and sweet. Every September when the plums are ripe, I make loads of plum jam, several plum pies, and I give a lot of plums away to relatives who are willing to stand on a ladder and carefully pick the fruit. With the remainder, I seed and dice the rest of the plums to store in the freezer.
Cooking Plums
I always seem to have too many bags of frozen plums and I got sick of plum pie and plum sauce and fruit salsa. So, I decided to try plum crisp but wanted to start with frozen plums, which are usually more watery. I searched online and found “Persian Mama,” and this is where I started. I switched up her method, cooking the plums in less time (I don’t like mushy fruit) and reducing the juice a little so it wasn’t so runny. The result was FANTASTIC and right up the alley of my daughter in law, who is Persian and loves sour/tart things. I even made this as a birthday “cake” for my 8 year old grandson who also loves tart things. Oh, and I love this crisp topping since it contains melted butter and is easy to stir together!
Plum Crisp
Makes 9 substantial servings
Plum Ingredients
- 3 pounds of fresh plums (or frozen plums) diced ½ inch (about 7+ cups)
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- 1 ½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Topping Ingredients
- ½ cups all purpose flour
- ⅓ cup packed dark brown sugar
- ½ cup old fashioned oats
- ¼ cup unsweetened shredded coconut (optional)
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- ⅓ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ cups coarsely chopped walnuts
- 4 oz butter, melted and cooled a little
Instructions
Note: if using diced frozen plums, do not thaw them – just briefly run warm water over them to get the surface ice to melt before adding sugar.
Add the plums, sugar and lemon juice to a heavy bottomed 3 quart sauce pan and let this sit on the counter for 30 minutes, stirring every 5-10 minutes to help the natural juice to form.
Heat the plum/sugar mixture until it boils, lower the heat to medium low and cook, uncovered, for 10 minutes. I then remove the plums with a slotted spoon to a bowl and continue cooking the fruit syrup for another 15 minutes until the juice thickens a bit and coats a spoon. Keep stirring often so the syrup does not burn.
Take off the stove, put the plums with the juice into a ceramic or glass 8 x 8 casserole and chill uncovered in the refrigerator for an hour. After an hour, turn the oven on to 350 degrees with the rack in the center.
To make the topping – simply stir everything together with a fork.
After the oven comes to 350 degrees, crumble the crisp topping over the baking dish that has the fruit/syrup syrup and bake for 25 minutes until golden brown and bubbly around the edges.
Cool on a rack for 20 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Cook’s notes: The sauce pan can be easily cleaned by soaking it in hot water with a little oxyclean.
I also used diced frozen rhubarb to substitute for ⅓ of the plums, just because I love rhubarb. It was really good.
