Zwetchgenkuchen: a lighter holiday plum tart

In spite of the recent weather snarling Thanksgiving traffic a few weeks ago and the upcoming winter holidays this week (Oy! Chanukah starts tonight! gotta get candles!), we still have plums in the market in southern California even now that it’s late December. Which adds a strange twist to the dessert I was going to post about belatedly, because I realize that’s probably not true in the rest of the country, so what now?

I first meant to post this recipe for a svelter pastry way back in October, on the heels of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, when plums are usually in season.

Zwetchgen, sometimes spelled zwetchken, or “quetches” in French, (could this possibly be the origin of the famed Yiddish word “kvetch”?–probably not, but it’s fun to think about it) are the elongated, blue-black Italian prune plums, which were in at my local Armenian corner grocery in September-October, along with the divine yellow-green sweet plums for eating raw. Unfortunately, most standard supermarket chains in the US don’t sell either fresh prunes or the yellow-green kind of plum in their produce sections, to say nothing of dinosaur plums (green and brown speckled outsides, variously pink and yellow insides, telltale dinosaur logo on the sticker) or Santa Rosa plums (pinkish-red outside, deep rose-pink insides), so it’s a good argument for seeking out your local mom-and-pop ethnic corner grocers wherever possible.

But my lightened-up method for a plum tart is still pretty adaptable to other fruits you probably do have–apples, pears, thickened berry jams or canned cherry filling, mincemeat,  or even, dare I suggest, canned pumpkin? (green tomatoes? even rarer than plums unless you garden, like my in-laws.)

So it’s not that you absolutely must have plums (only for a plum tart, it’s kind of required) nor that you should do the (nearly) unthinkable for a plum tart and use dried prunes somehow. Which, I promise, I am not doing here. Well, maybe they’d work in mincemeat, preferably a vegetarian version with no suet involved. Actually, someone back in the old days of the nursery rhyme probably was using prunes and it understandably fell out of favor when fresh fruits became available more widely during the winter months. Or when some bright young thing started selling premade mincemeat filling in jars…

This lightened-up European-style tart for a holiday or other party tastes good, makes the most of end-of-season fruit, and isn’t overwhelmingly rich or oversweetened. It’s got a thin, delicate crust, an almond filling, and tart, substantial wedges of fruit. The almond extract or amaretto (or you could use rum or brandy or kirsch, or orange liqueur, or orange blossom water if you’re going nonalcoholic) gives it something most American desserts these days sorely lack–not the alcohol, which quickly bakes out, but a depth and complexity of flavor that don’t depend on sugar or butter.

And people will like it and be impressed even if there’s no butter (or suet, in the case of mincemeat) or the bottom gets a little soggy–which it did, and which is why I’m recommending the “try, try again” method. Jumping ahead, I discovered that, wonder of wonders, prebaking the crust is in fact a good idea and the standard oldfashioned instructions are not just wasting your time, especially if you’re using a lighter recipe without butter and rolling thinner than the standard 3/8 inch (4 mm, more or less).

Joan Nathan’s version of this tart from The Jewish Holiday Kitchen (mine is the 1984 spiralbound edition I still hang onto) calls for a “mürbeteig” sweet tart crust with butter or margarine, an egg, and so on–like pasta frolla or pâte brisée, and the filling is cut-up plums plus a fair bit of spice and brandy and sugar to dress things up.

I wanted something less rich for myself, partly because I’m on statins for a reason and need to watch it, partly because I’m not a huge fan of excess butter or sugar tastewise, and partly to see how the prune plums themselves would taste baked. I used the boureka dough oil-and-water pastry from my last post, rolled it very thin, filled it with almond paste and wedges of plum, and it went very well indeed as a mini-tart for two, about 6 inches across. That size works nicely in a toaster oven too.

The boureka dough is nondairy and vegan, so you can make it for a meat meal like Thanksgiving if you keep kosher.

I also ran across a pretty good-looking dairy-based light pie crust recipe in sweet and unsweet versions from a like-minded baker on a YouTube channel…who turned out to be the ’80s and ’90s talk show host Jenny Jones! She’s now in her early 70s and doing a cooking channel as well as heading a charity. Who knew?

Her pie crust was made with polyunsaturated vegetable oil and 1% lowfat milk. Milk? Could it work? It looked like it did. How thin would it roll out? How much oil was really in it for the flour? Was it more or less than what I was using before? Get out the calculator…

Jenny Can Cook aka Jenny Jones‘s versions (from her YouTube channel)

2-crust sweetened

• 2.5 c (300 g) flour
• 2 T (30 g) sugar
• 1/2 t (3 g) salt
• 1/2 c (4 oz or 120 g) each neutral vegetable oil and lowfat milk

1-crust unsweetened

• 1 2/3 c (200 g) flour
• 1/4 t (1 g) salt
• 1/3 c (80 g) each oil and lowfat milk

Based on the gram weights of what she listed, her recipe has the oil at ~40% the weight of the flour. It’s less than what you’d use for most pie dough, and it’s mostly unsaturated, but it’s not actually low in fat, and calories still count.

I decided to go a little lower than that for my own version–30% by weight, and much less salt. I also decided, I’m not quite sure why, to do what I’d done in the boureka dough recipe and heated the milk before stirring in to build gluten a bit and make it easier to roll out very thin.

My butterless quick brown tart crust

• 100 g (a little less than a cup) AP flour
• 30 g polyunsaturated vegetable oil (canola, soybean, corn, expeller-pressed grapeseed, light olive oil, etc. Be sure to check expiration dates and freshness of any oil you use)
• pinch of salt, optional 1 t sugar
• 30 g skim milk, heated in the microwave ~15 s.

Stir the oil, salt and sugar into the flour first, then heat the milk in the microwave before stirring it in. Rest 30 min before rolling out. (or don’t bother; it won’t make a huge difference).

So far, so good. Now for the plum tarts:

Mini-zwetchgenkuchen with milk/oil tart crust (serves 1-3)

• walnut-sized ball of dough as above
• 3-4 fresh prune plums or 2 regular eating plums, pitted and quartered if small or sliced in wedges
• 2-3 T almond meal
• 1-2 T granulated sugar
• 1-2 T amaretto or a few drops almond extract
• light sprinkling of turbinado/raw washed coarse-crystal brown sugar
• pinches of cinnamon, clove and/or ginger to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 F/200C.
2. Roll out a small ball of dough fairly thin, to 6-7 inches (15-17 cm) in diameter on a sheet of ungreased parchment baking paper or tinfoil on a baking sheet.
3. Mix almond meal with granulated sugar in a cup. If using almond extract, add very sparingly–1 drop is enough. Spread the paste over the pastry base.
4. Cut up the plums in thick wedges (halves are fine for smaller plums like fresh prunes) and arrange them on the almond paste layer so they stand mostly upright (points up) and are fairly tightly packed. Fold the edges of the dough over like a galette to hold them in. You could also slice the plums thinner and just lay them down like apple slices and it would be fine too, but less like a traditional zwetchgenkuchen layout.
5. Give a light sprinkle each of amaretto and turbinado (coarse brown or “raw washed”) sugar and a tiny dusting of cinnamon.
6. Bake in a standard big oven for about 25 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown and smelling good and the plums are just turning tender and pinkish in places. The pointed tips may blacken slightly but it won’t hurt the flavor.
7. Or you can bake in a toaster oven without preheating (note: only good for the minizwetch, not a full-size tart as below): Lower the toaster oven temperature to 400F, use tinfoil instead of parchment paper, and slice the plums thinner and arrange them flat over the almond paste since the heating element is so close. Think 15-20 minutes baking time–it might take a little less time than in the big oven. You just have to keep an eye on it a bit. You want the base browned nicely and the plums just starting to get juicy and a little golden-to-pink inside.

Verdict for both dairy and nondairy versions: Pretty good and relatively fast. I can see why people sugar their fruit more heavily or use a richer tart dough for a bakery-standard pastry that feeds a holiday table full of people expecting something rich and sweet-sweet, but my husband and I still liked this lighter version a lot as a small impromptu dessert that was plenty for two, and we didn’t feel overwhelmed after eating a slice.

Full-on zwetch with turkey-based mishap

However…when I scaled up and made a full-size version with a nondairy crust at my in-laws’ last month, I learned  a few hard lessons I want to pass on here. First, my daughter decided the Little Jack Horner rhyme applied to her and stole a wedge of plum out of the pie while it was still cooling. Nobody caught her at it or noticed the difference, for which I award her points, but since she ‘fessed up (boasted) the next day, I’ve taken them back. Loose lips sink ships.

So rule number one is: Watch out for pie thieves. Second, size matters when you’re baking pie. Here’s why.

I made the pie nondairy for Thanksgiving and added a little more sugar since it was for a holiday and other people were interested in tasting it. It was going to sit in competition/company with a pecan-bourbon and an apple pie from a high-tone Berkeley bakery.

I didn’t think to parbake the crust first before adding the plums, and this turned out to be much more important for a whole pie than a mini. The bigger the pie, the more plums compared with the amount of crust, particularly if you’re the type to roll your crusts thin.  All of which means more juice comes out when it bakes…

I macerated and drained the plums before adding them to try and compensate. The pie looked fine and smelled pretty impressive right after baking, and it seemed to set well as it cooled. And my thieving daughter verified that it tasted good. But reheating it during Thanksgiving dinner once the turkey was out of the oven was a mistake–it brought out still more juice, more than the almond filling could handle. Tasted and smelled nice, very rich and almondy, and the edges were still fine, but the bottom crust just sogged out once we cut into it.

So–as with any cooking mishap, what do you do? That’s right, back to the drawing board and try again with new tweaks based on what you learned. The taste was fine, it’s just a structural problem, I kept telling myself.

I made another full-sized red plum tart this week to test that theory (and because, really). I not only parbaked the crust this time but added an egg to the almond filling, as for macarons or mandelhorns, hoping the mixture would firm up and seal the crust better, maybe even rise up a bit to encase the fruit, and absorb more of the plum juices. After baking a full hour, not 45 minutes, I left the pie in the turned-off oven another 20-30 minutes to try and evaporate more of the juice before pulling it out to cool. And the result was definitely better and the pie lasted 3-4 days wrapped in the fridge.

Revised Plum Almond Tart

Thin-rolling Tart Crust (can be done ahead but it’s quick):

• 60 g (2 oz or 1/2 c.) AP flour
• 6 g (1.5 t) sugar
• pinch of salt (~1 g)
• 18 g or ml (a bit more than 1/2 oz or about 1.5 T or 4-5 t) light-tasting vegetable oil (grapeseed, light olive, soybean, corn, canola)
• 18 g or ml (4-5 t) preferably hot skim milk OR FOR NONDAIRY use water plus a squeeze of lemon or 1 t cider vinegar

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C.

Stir together the flour, sugar and salt with the oil until it forms slightly gummy clumps throughout. Heat the milk or water and vinegar or lemonin the microwave about 10-15 s (optional but helpful; you could just mix it in cold if necessary), pour it on and stir in to make a cohesive dough, reasonably firm, that forms a ball (if it’s too loose, add a spoonful of flour). Scoop into a plastic baggie to cool and rest a few minutes (30-60 min is nice if you have it, but it’s not essential).

Roll out between sheets of plastic wrap or parchment paper to about 15 inches (~37 cm?) in diameter or a bit larger than your pie tin. With this small amount of dough, the rolled-out sheet will be quite thin, less than 1/8 inch or about 2-3 mm thick. It will bake to a delicate but capable tart crust. Press the circle of dough into the pie tin, trim and crimp the edges, patch any cracks or bare spots with the trimmed extra, prick a few times with a fork.

Press a sheet of tinfoil into the pan on top of the dough to hold it in place (it’s thin enough that it doesn’t really need baking beans or rice), and parbake about 15 minutes in a 400F/200C oven before filling. Take it out and remove the top foil. The edges should be turning light golden brown and the bottom should be paler but just-baked and a little dry, like crackers or the tops of biscuits, not still doughy.

Keep the oven on if you’re baking right away.

While the crust is baking, make the filling.

Almond Filling:

• 60 g (2 oz, 1/2 c.) almond meal
• 30-40 g sugar, to taste (my original was 20 g; not really sweet enough and a bit dry; I’d go higher next time)
• 1-2 drops almond extract or 1 T amaretto
• 1-2 egg whites, optional, or a spoonful of milk, butter or margarine or applesauce (see notes)

Mix the filling together and spread it over the base of the baked pie crust.

Notes:

1. Almond extract is much stronger and a little more decadent/unsubtle than amaretto in the baked tart. Be very sparing.
2. I tried a whole egg and the result was a little dry; so I’m recommending more sugar and 2 egg whites instead. If you add egg at all, don’t taste the mixture, or else taste for sweetness before adding it.
3. For a moister, softer frangipane filling after baking, you might add a little butter or margarine or a spoonful of milk and a little more sugar to the almond filling, probably not as much as in a standard classic French recipe–maybe just a tablespoon extra each. The calorie count will obviously go up. Grated apple or a bit of applesauce might work too; I haven’t tried this yet but it seems to work in my Passover Sachertorte and apple-almond cakes.

Plums:

• 6-8 medium to large red or other plums, pitted and cut in thick wedges (quarters, eighths, whatever works)
• 1-2 T granulated sugar and squeeze of lemon juice
• pinches of cinnamon, cloves and ginger
• 1-2 T turbinado sugar for sprinkling
• 1-2 T amaretto for sprinkling

If your plums are kind of old and wrinkly and/or end-of-season and a little dry inside, or you just want the plums sweetened more thoroughly before baking, you can macerate them 15-30 minutes before baking by mixing the slices with the granulated sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and letting them sit, then draining off the juices that collect in the bottom of the bowl before arranging the slices on top of the almond filling.

Otherwise, just mix the wedges with the sugar and optional lemon, arrange them on top of the almond filling in concentric circles, points up, starting at the outside and packing tightly in to the center. Sprinkle on the amaretto, the spices, and the turbinado sugar, and put the filled tart pan on a baking sheet or foil for insurance in case the tart bubbles over a little during baking.

Bake at 400F/200C for 45 min to 1 hour, until golden brown and smelling good, with the almond filling solidified and risen partway to capture the plum slices. Let the tart stand another 20 minutes in the turned-off oven to continue evaporating the juices before taking it out to cool all the way.

Variations:

Apples or pears

Peel, core and slice 3-5 apples or pears in half-inch thick (1 cm) wedges. To dejuice a bit first, spread the wedges on a microwaveable plate (Corelle is good) and microwave 2-3 minutes until just tender. Drain off the juices and arrange the slices in concentric circles (lying flat, more or less) on the almond filling in the prebaked tart shell. Sprinkle on some sliced almonds and turbinado sugar at will, plus amaretto as above.

Dried fruit/mincemeat? filling (I know, I said I wasn’t going to use prunes, but I changed my mind slightly–I think it would kind of work)

Traditional English recipes contain suet and other weirdness I find neither necessary nor appetizing (especially the overload of nutmeg), but it’s your kitchen. If you want properly tested recipes, see David Lebovitz’s recent post–he does both vegetarian and traditional versions.

My poorly-informed guess for mincemeat, never actually having sampled it personally, is a dried fruits/nuts/spices/citrus/liquor blend, something like a jazzed-up and chunkier version of my prune filling for hamantaschen.

My suggestions for a speedy version (no suet allowed):

To soak a couple of handfuls of dried prunes, figs, apricots, pitted dates, raisins and so on quickly, place the fruits in a microwaveable bowl with just enough water to cover the fruit. Add a lid and microwave 3-5 minutes or until the water is very hot to simmering. Let stand 10-15 minutes or so to soak up until fairly tender. Drain, keeping the cooking liquid in case you need it, and chop the fruits coarsely in a food processor with a few handfuls of walnuts or almonds, a few spoonfuls of brandy or amaretto, some cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and clove (go light on the nutmeg in my humble opinion), maybe a squeeze of orange or lemon juice, a little fresh organic rind or, easier by far, a dollop of orange marmalade. Pulse until it all makes a reasonably thick chunky paste, and if it’s too stiff, drizzle a little of the reserved soaking liquid back in to make it just a little fluffier and more spreadable. Taste to correct for sweetness, spice, tartness, booziness, etc.

B’te’avon, mangia bene, bon appétit, eat nice! If you’re a pie thief, be sneaky about it and don’t leave tracks or boast right in front of the chef. Never confess!

And Happy Chanukah, happy holidays, whatever you celebrate (I heard a Merry Solstice a few weeks ago; I guess that was last night. Too cold to dance around in a toga though…)