Tangy Plums for the Finish: Plum and Almond Tart

I made a lot of desserts with Italian prune plums this year, but my final plum baking project of the season was one using Santa Rosa plums. Alice Medrich has several plum recipes in Pure Dessert written for plums that "make you pucker slightly when you taste the flesh nearest the skin," such as Santa Rosa, Laroda, Friar, or Elephant Heart. She specifically says that Italian prune plums are not tangy enough. Fortunately, I was able to get Santa Rosa plums at Whole Foods to make her "Plum and Almond Tart."

This recipe is easy. You mix almonds, sugar, salt, and almond extract in a food processor; add flour and baking powder; and pulse in butter and an egg until the mixture begins to clump together. You press the dough into a fluted tart pan, arrange sliced plums on top, press the fruit slightly into the dough, and bake.

Although this is called a "tart," it is really more of a tart-shaped almond cake with plums on top. The cake was quite sweet and very almond-y -- so much so that I saw this as more of an almond cake with plums than a plum cake with almonds. Since I love almonds, I enjoyed it quite a bit -- but I didn't like it as much as my favorite Italian prune plum recipes from this season (see, e.g., this plum cake from Dr. Oetker and this plum tart from Beatrice Ojakangas). Still, it was a very nice finish to my plum baking season.

Recipe: "Plum and Almond Tart" from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

Previous Posts:

• "Doubly Delightful: Plum Cake with a Double Base," September 30, 2017.
• "The Pure Pleasure of Purple Plums: Purple Plum Tart (Plómukaka)," September 23, 2017.
• "Where's the Plum in My Plum Cake?: Spiced Plum Streusel Cake with Toffee Glaze," September 19, 2017.
• "Plum Pizza, Anyone?: Pflaumenstreuselkuchen (Yeasted Plum Cake with Streusel)," September 17, 2017.
• "The Crust Is Dark, but the Fruit Shines: Italian Plum Almond Tart," September 16, 2017.