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Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars

July 15, 2013 by TheWhiteRamekins

Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars 1

These crumb cookies bars are definitely going to be your best friends. They come with no frills attached and would truly prove to be your friend in need. When you are hard pressed for time and have to feed a crowd and want a simple no-fuss quick bars, these crumb bars save you a day. Crumbly buttery shortbread bars with a vibrant tart fruit filling sandwiched within.

Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars 5

These fruity bars are so incredible that they’ll remind you of your best pies and crumbles, but without any sloppy serving of unmanageable serving on a dessert plate. The whole thing is like a breeze. Through in some good ingredients, pop them into oven, cut into squares and voila! Isn’t that sound simple enough?

Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars 4Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars 8

And the best thing is you could add any of your favorite fruit to these bars. As this is the season of stone fruit, my obvious yet favorite choice was these vibrant cherries and plums. Cherries accentuated the color of the fruit filling while plums added to the tartness, which paired well with the buttery and sweet vanilla shortbread.

Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars 3

These are good enough to be served in breakfast or to be packed in your lunch box to be enjoyed in afternoon snack or to be relished in dessert alongside a generous scoop of very good vanilla ice cream.

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I took them to my family and they were polished real quick. Kids liked them a lot, I couldn’t believe that they accepted a fruit bake so peacefully!

Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars

Recipe adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Cherry & Plum Crumb Bars 2

Ingredients

Crumb
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
90 gm unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
1/2 of a beaten egg
seeds of 1/2 vanilla bean
1/8 tsp salt

Filling
Zest and juice of one lime
1 1/2 cup fresh cherries and plums, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cornstarch

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius and line 8 x 8 inch square baking pan with parchment paper, with some extra paper hanging off the two opposite sides of the pan.
  2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, vanilla seeds. With a pastry blender or fork, work the chilled butter and the egg into the flour mixture until mixture resembles a coarse meal.
  3. Pat half the crumb base into the bottom of the prepared pan.
  4. In a bowl of a food processor, briefly pulse the fruit filling ingredients until the fruit is coarsely chopped but not pureed.
  5. Spread the filling over crumb base and sprinkle the remaining crumbs evenly over the fruit.
  6. Bake cookies for 35-40 minutes, until lightly brown on top. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

Filed Under: cookies Tagged With: breakfast, breakfast bars, cherry, crumb bars, dessert, food, healthy, plum, smitten kitchen cookbook, stone fruit

Plum Cake

August 11, 2012 by TheWhiteRamekins

Stone fruits have taken my attention lately, probably they are almost out of season or they will last a couple of weeks. They were on my checklist ever since they appeared first time in this season. But I am not sure, why I hadn’t tried anything yet except for this cherry cake. There was one thing or the other which would pop up to be picked up first and the poor stone fruit would make way for them.

But last week, when I went to my parents, my brother brought home a whole big carton of these red juicy sweet sour plums, and that was it. It caught my attention and the verdict was out. This time, no other thing. It had to be those plums only. Now that when I had decided, I had to look for a good recipe too. I looked through my tiny bookshelf, if I could found something there. There was a recipe for an apricot frangipane tart which enticed me initially, but then I hesitated a bit because of all that butter that would go into the tart shell and the almond filling. Whereas, I was looking for something which could be a decent tea time snack. And I saved that tart for some other day, when I would crave for something decadent and wholesome.

And then leaving the bookshelf behind, I moved onto searching through the web. Tons of thanks to this beautiful blog by Beatrice of la tartine gourmande. This was exactly I was looking for. I was impressed by the simplicity and the lightness of this cake, which it got probably because of less sugar and the less butter. A perfect snack for a perfect tea time.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup sugar {powdered}
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
60 gm butter
zest of 3 lemons
8-10 plums thinly sliced
3 tbsp demerara sugar

Instructions

  1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, powdered sugar and salt in a bowl and keep aside.
  2. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and buttermilk. Mix in the melted butter and lemon zest.
  3. Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir until combined.
  4. Spoon the batter into an 11 inch quiche pan and scatter plum slices on the top.
  5. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake in 200 degree Celsius preheated oven for around 20 to 25 minutes until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Filed Under: cake Tagged With: food, plum, stone fruit, teacake

Hi! I'm Himanshu - a home chef who loves to cook, bake, style and photo shoot... Read More…

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