Oven-Roasted Plums
I made a statement recently on social media that plums were my favorite fruit. I guess I said the same thing about cherries, at some point, which I was reminded of. But I’ll confess that I may have also said the same thing about nectarines, figs, mangoes, and litchis at some point in my life. However plums really are my favorite fruit, and I’m happy that they stick around from summer all the way through the beginning of fall.
There are a lot of plums out there. In Northern California we had big purple Santa Rosa plums, as well as an array of others with names like Elephant Heart and Angelino, as well as pluots, a hybrid of apricots and plums. While they don’t show up in Paris, there are green Reine Claudes (which are close to being at the top of my list for favorite varieties of plums), tiny golden Mirabelles, and sturdy Quetsches, which hold their shape relatively well during baking. And while they’re not as tart as U.S. varieties (most of the tartness of plums is in their skins), they are reliably good, and flavorful, when baked or oven-roasted, as I often prepare them.
While I was grabbing what likely are the last nectarines of the season at the market the other day, there were plenty of quetsches in the next bin. They go by other names elsewhere, such as prune plums, and are closely related to Damson plums. You don’t have to get too hung up on the name; just look for violet, ovoid plums, and those should work just fine.
Plums have a lovely tendency, when cooked, to create their own beautifully-colored, naturally-thickened sauce, which is why I adore using plums to make jam. Here, a few spoonfuls of honey coax additional juices from the plums and mingle with them as the juices thicken after baking, and sitting for a bit.
For a variety of reasons, I have a lot of vanilla. And while prices have spiked in recently years, I feel well-invested in my baking future (and present) and added some vanilla bean powder, which is basically dried and pulverized beans. I like the little specks that show up here and there, but also the earthy vanilla flavor of the beans (versus extract) works really well with plums. But if spices are your thing, as they sometimes are mine, a cinnamon stick or other spices, can certainly fill in for the vanilla.
| Oven-Roasted Plums | Print Recipe |
| 6 servings |
Storage: The Oven-Roasted Plums will keep in the refrigerator up to one week.
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Yum! I have enough jam from my damson tree to last me for a while, so when the season rolls around here in NZ this will be a great option to enjoy my damsons another way.
David –
Thanks for the inspiration! I made these plums a few days ago, and the recipe is now going into the regular rotation chez moi. I went with cinnamon, lemon and Dolin blanc, and they were fabulous, both on ice cream and on yogurt.
I’m hoping to make some plum preserves this week, but I notice your recipe calls for strawberries, which I don’t have on hand. Do you have a recipe for just plums? I’ve got about 2 pounds of fruit.
Thanks so much for keeping so many of us fed, lubricated and happy these days. I love Drinking French and all your IG Lives!
That Dolin blanc is very nice, with the soft notes of elderflowers and vanilla. Good way to use it! My Plum Jam recipes hews closely to my Apricot Jam recipe so you could use that one.
Glad you’re enjoying Drinking French : )
Betsy, there are no strawberries in the actual recipe, just the picture
hi Penny; She’s referring to the Plum-Strawberry Jam recipe on the site – but you’re right the strawberries here are just served on the side. (They were great with the plums and yogurt!)
I am also in love with the small plums that are used to make the dried prunes, usually called prunes d’Agen (Prunus Domesticus), as that is the area where most of them are grown and dried. The season is very short and if the green grocer is doing his job, they are marked prunes d’ente, which I always heard as Danté’s prunes until I saw it in writing. I was on a bike trip in that area mid August and we feasted on these little beauties as a lot of them grow in the wild. Just read that the light dusting on the prunes is a good sign of freshness. If too “clean” that means they have been around a bit.
Susan
Interesting post as when I lived in Germany there is a famous cake called Zwetschen Kuchen. A plum cake which is really good. They use the plums you called Questsches = Zwetschen. Perhaps you could add this cake to your repertoire. In Australia these plums are rarely seen in the markets, but good to know that they still exist.
I’ve made Pflaumenstreuselkuchen, which is a wonderful German cake with a streusel topping, but haven’t made the one you’re talking about. I’ve read that one uses a different type of plum, Zwetschgen vs. Pflaumen, according to Luisa Weiss, but yes- German baking uses these types of plums very well!
thanks David, will try – I have plums roasted with allspice and butter on my porridge in winter :)
HI, David. Some years ago I had some plums to use up and decided to make a clafoutis. It was bland so next try I experimented with a tablespoon of lavender. It was heavenly. The caveat is only 1 tablespoon as any more makes it better. I love culinary lavender and I bet it would be a nice “spice” option here.
Here in Belgium they are called Président plums. Together with Reine Claude, they are my favourite kind. <3
Thanks so much for posting this as I bought too many plums recently and wondering what to do with them. Would vanilla extract work in place of the powder?
Yes, but it’s a different flavor – however extract will work fine. I’d use a teaspoon or so.
our new plum tree,
Wangenheims Frühzwetschge, very flavorful here in the mountains arrived last week
– the old one had to be removed-
+ now there is the big decision where to plant it.
So, for the time being I just have to buy the local quetsches/Zwetschgen
for trying the recipe
Thanks David. Great looking pictures!
Love the fruit.
We now more than ever live in a world where anyone can be on the attack mode! Either for envy ,or positioning ones self above others!
Dont know to many times where a persons favorite is for ever, if so nothing new will be tried or discovered with enthusiasm !
I have always enjoyed your perspective .
Quetsche/Zwetschgen and ginger works really good as well – I make that jam every autumn. And if you want to make Zwetschgenkuchen just combine your favourite yeast cake bottom and put the plums on top, cut side upwards. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar or cover with Streusel. Bake and enjoy slightly warm with vanilla whipped cream.
Hi David. I too love plumbs and will make these roasted ones.
Could I process in a water bath to can to preserve them this way?
Thanks!
I don’t know about these as I haven’t ever processed them but there are instructions on this website for canning plums which perhaps will give you some guidance.
At a certain time of year in SW France, I vary my morning hike to pass by a tree that drops these lovely little plums onto the path. I never knew what they were called, but now I do, thanks to your picture.
I’ve made a tart with the ones we didn’t eat. Hopefully the EU’s borders will open back up by next fall, and I can try roasting them. They are delicious.
Thanks for giving us all a diversion during this pandemic. I’ve loved all the videos, and of course, your blog.
I made your delicious molleux from last month with these plums on Saturday. That is now a memory, today is the farmer’s market, and this will definitely be tonight’s activity. These plums are also very good in a spicy jam with star anise and ginger. I’m with you David, favorite fruits, although love my children equally as they say! Thanks for all the inspiration.
Hi David. I know this is a bit off-topic here, but I also made the molleux last week with these plums. I took great care to arrange them in such a lovely concentric circle pattern, only to find all the plums on the bottom of the cake when it came out of the oven. My straight from the chicken eggs were quite large and I thought that maybe the dough was too soft…? Is this what happened when you used 3 eggs in your molleux? Naturally, the cake tasted great anyway!
Mine didn’t sink but stayed on top but as you can see in the photo in the post, when I used apricots they sunk into the center. It didn’t bother me as they both tasted great! : )
Gorgeous photo of the plums!
This is a lovely recipe – thanks so much for sharing it. A favorite yearly interlude of mine is the fleeting moment in autumn in the Northeastern United States when crisp, new-crop apples are in at the farmer’s market alongside the little prune-plums. Then I make big panfuls of oven-roasted apple chunks and little quartered plums, with a varying tableau of spices and flavorings. They roast until they collapse together into a rustic sauce (still with the skins on). The plums give a wonderful rosy magenta cast to the whole bowlful. It’s my latest form of applesauce, good with any meal or at any time of day. But it’s gorgeous served at this time of year with slow braised brisket and gravy, kasha varnishkes, roasted root veg “tzimmes” and other Rosh Hashanah delights — more desserts featuring plums, apples and honey, of course. I got the base idea from my mother, who in the fall often tossed some prune-plums into her pressure-cooker applesauce. Despite growing up with a working mother, I was one of those lucky children who didn’t realize that applesauce (that horrifying mealy yellow stuff in the US) came in jars.
Perfect timing! I picked about 20 lbs of these lovely plums from a friend’s trees yesterday and was thinking about roasting then freezing them. Yum!
This looks delicious! I used to be able to get these and mirabelles at my local Farmers Market. Alas, the Farmer leased out the portion of his farm with the plum trees. He has replanted on his remaining acres but it will be a few years before we have some. It was the only place I know of here in Southern California that grew these plums. I am envious of your bounty!
I didn’t even know vanilla powder was a thing! Whenever I use a vanilla bean, I’ve been drying the pod and pulverizing it in my spice grinder to use up. I call it “crushed vanilla bean”, and it’s so good in baked goods.
Ahhh perfect timing! I was out in a orchard picking these beautiful purple jewels when this recipe showed up in my inbox. Thank you for always sharing these delicious recipes! (I made your fresh mint ice cream this past weekend…)
I am sure these will be wonderful as I have made other roasted fruit, and it always seem to turn out well. If I overbake I just call it fruit sauce. This is the sort of thing we like to eat on top of our chia pudding.
Bonjour! I made this from the yield of my Italian plum tree and served it with a pork roast. I have a 20 year old Mirabelle tree which I treasure and this year planted a Reine Claude – My three favourites. I made a great Mirabelle chutney this year as I had plenty of last year’s jam. Thank you for your wonderful writing and inspiration.
I had filled the survey out and hope it didn’t come through as “stick to baking!” I always feel like I’m reading about things you love, and that’s really the draw of it! Like roasted fruit, I never really liked but these look so damn good so I may go to the market just for this.
Just beautiful. I love plums with star anise and also loved them cooked with cardamom.
Thanks for a wonderful inspiration!
I used Lillet Blanc in place of the wine. The citrus flavors work well, but if I did this again, I would probably use 2 tablespoons Lillet and 2 tablespoons water or juice instead, to let the flavor of the plum come forward a little more. Very much looking forward to having this with the creme fraiche ice cream from The Perfect Scoop!
Egypt grows lots of figs. I used to find a variety of small figs being sold in the city of Aswan in southern Egypt in late summer. They were amazing.
vanilla powder!?! i have found everything from ground vanilla beans to vanilla sugar. i am anxious to get this just so. help. s’il vous plait & merci beaucoup
Vanilla powder is the same as ground vanilla beans, which is sometimes also called vanilla bean powder. (Ground vanilla seeds are just the seeds, but those are harder to find and more expensive.)
Do you think Muscatine would work here?
Muscadine Grapes
Any white wine (or rosé, in fact) would work!
My apologies! I was wondering if I could roast the grapes in place of the plums. The grape skins are a smidge thicker than the plums but maybe roast them a little longer? Thank you for responding.
The produce item of this year’s MasterChef Australia was the Davidson plum.
I would love to try this but it seems it isn’t available in the Western/Northern hemisphere. From their descriptions it is a very sour plum.
Have you ever sampled it?
I’ll admit I’m not much of a “measuring” kind of cook, I just halved the plums, drizzled probably more than the recommended amount of honey, vanilla and wine, along with the other ingredients plus some star anise I had and they still came out great!
I’m afraid I overdid the roasting and ended up with pretty soupy plums. But….I ended up tossing the soupy plums along with a tablespoon of vanilla-infused vodka (192 proof – yes, I live in Poland) into my ice-cream maker. This was, hands down, the best tasting, fluffiest (?!?!), most gorgeous sorbet I have ever had.
Plums can go from perfect to too-cooked somewhat quickly, but the puree (or in your case “soupy” plums) makes a great base for ice cream or sorbet. And there’s also Jeff Morgenthaler’s Plum Sour cocktail, which uses a teaspoon of plum jam – and those soupy plums would work well if you fancy a cocktail! : )
This year I was inspired by the folks at World Spice Merchants
https://www.worldspice.com/
to stew fruits
(black plums, blueberries)
with maple syrup and toasted caraway seeds.
Mind blowing & awesome, especially served with thick yogurt and a drizzle of more maple syrup.
It’s turned into one of my go to COVID recipes.
https://www.silkroaddiary.com/caraway-mini-pancakes/