I had intended to make rugulach. But then last night, just before I rolled up the rolls here, I found myself uninspired and frankly, a bit lazy. And I couldn’t find my ruler — and if you know me, I can’t cut a straight line if I tried. So, instead, I rolled the rugulach dough into logs, with the jam spread in the inside, and baked these Spiced Peach Swirl Cookies up this morning. Turned out it was a pretty nice compromise.
Browsing Tag
fruits-and-berries
It wouldn’t be autumn in my world without plum cake. Pflaumenkuchen, Zwetschgenkuchen, Zwetschgendatschi … whatever you want to call it, it’s a very common autumn dessert or snack to coffee-time in southern Germany. This time, I made one a little different, with the addition of cardamom. I love cardamom too and the combination with the tart italian plums is fantastic.
Mirabelle plums are one of my favorite fruits, but they are actually quite difficult to come by in the US. They are very small (in some cases, not much larger than a cherry) and have a fairly short shelf life. They are also a trademark yellow. I made do this time by finding similar small plum (a little smaller than a golf ball) but I had some mirabelle jam, which I put under the fresh plums on these crumble bars. They are quite juicy, a little tart and very yummy.
I am calling this creation a “Olive Oil, Almond and Sweet Plum Cake” but what it actually is is what happens when you take two of Joanne Chang’s Recipes from Flour Love — the Plum Frangipane Tart (page 230) and the Olive Oil Cake with Fresh Grapes (page 297) and combine them. Turns out, it’s pretty spectacular as a combination — it’s mostly the Olive Oil Cake recipes, but instead of grapes, I used tiny sweet plums. I’m guessing it would also work really well with cherries (pitted) or gooseberries as well. At any rate, glorious inspiration for an otherwise unforgettable Monday.
So, these cookies are a little out of character for me: for starters, they are bigger, like the size of my hand. That is unusual for me as I prefer smaller cookies. And second, they use artificial colors in the sugar, which I do once in a blue moon. But back in late June, i made some fantastic strawberry jam, and then in mid-July, I found a strawberry shaped cookie cutter, so I knew that these cookies needed to me. They are actually quite yummy, with just a hint of almond in the cookie itself. And the homemade jam is great too.