Kuchen for Kaffee und Kuchen — the afternoon cake
Zwetschgenkuchen (Plum Cake on Yeast Dough)
FestiveReconstruction🍯 🍋moyen2 h (including 1 h 20 min rising)
A large brioche-like flatbread covered with plums arranged in scales, which release their juice and become candied under a shower of cinnamon sugar. Tart, fragrant, comforting.
Kuchen for Kaffee und Kuchen — the afternoon cake
A large brioche-like flatbread covered with plums arranged in scales, which release their juice and become candied under a shower of cinnamon sugar. Tart, fragrant, comforting.
On Sundays, at the end of summer, there was always this cake — the plums ripen late, and we arranged them on the dough like tiles, tight, standing up. I am not a precise pastry chef, I freely admit: yeast dough forgives, it waits while you chat. You take it out warm, dust it with sugar and cinnamon, and make coffee — lots of coffee. It was on those afternoons, around a cake you share with your hands, that the most serious things and the funniest were said.
Ingredients
- •Wheat flour — a pound (yeast dough)
- •Fresh baker's yeast — a cube (leavening)
- •Warm milk — a glass (liquid)
- •Butter — a good spoonful (softness)
- •Sugar — to taste (sweetness)
- •Ripe plums (Zwetschgen) — two pounds (topping)
- •Ground cinnamon — a generous pinch (signature spice)
How it was made : In Germany, this cake was traditionally baked on a large sheet (Blechkuchen) in late summer when plums were abundant, and cut into squares for Sunday coffee. It was often served with whipped cream. Yeast dough rather than shortcrust: this is the oldest and most popular version.
Sources : Tradition du Blechkuchen / Pflaumenkuchen, cuisine domestique allemande · Institution sociale du Kaffee und Kuchen, Mitteleuropa, XXe siècle