Plum Cobbler

After a surprise CSA box showed up at our house (I had suspended delivery for a few months and forgotten it was going to show up), I suddenly had a lot of produce to work through including 2 pounds of small mystery plums. And so I searched the internet for ideas on what to do with these and found a recipe for plum cobbler on Simply Recipes: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/plum_cobbler/

 After a trip to the store for milk and cornstarch I was ready to go! (By the way why do they insist on gluing a seal on the jar of cornstarch? It ended up all over me and the counter when I tried to open it!) Of course I made some changes as I went along, substituting honey for the white sugar, increasing the cinnamon, adding some ginger, a pinch of cinnamon in the topping and mixing some almond meal and vanilla extract into the biscuit. The plum, honey and spice mixture smelled divine on my countertop while I mixed the biscuit topping.

Plum mixture, Yum!

Here it is before going into the oven to bake.

The result was delicious! Even Boy liked it despite his suspicious comments "What is it? What's in it?"

Below is the recipe I ended up with:

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup plus 2 tbsp clover honey

• ~2lbs. fresh plums, seeds and stems removed and sliced and diced

• 2 Tbsp cornstarch

• ½ Tsp plus a pinch of ground cinnamon

• ¼ Tsp ground ginger

• 1 cup all purpose flour

• 1 ½ Tbsp almond meal

• 1 ½ Tsp baking powder

• ¼ tsp salt

• ¼ cup butter

• ¼ cup milk

• 1 egg slightly beaten

• 1 Tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F

2. In a large bowl stir together plums, cornstarch, ¾ cup honey, ½ tsp of cinnamon, ginger until combined. Pour into a 2 quart casserole dish (I used a 9 inch circular cake pan and it turned out fine, so what ever you have on hand that won’t overflow is probably fine.)

3. In a medium bowl combine dry ingredients: flour, almond meal, pinch of cinnamon, baking powder and salt (I forgot the salt, don’t do that! It works but the biscuit would be better with salt). Cut in the butter until it resembles coarse crumbs. (This is easier if your butter is slightly softer than fresh out of the fridge.) Stir in milk, vanilla and egg until batter is moistened.

4. Drop batter over the fruit. Try to spread it out over the majority of the fruit. Bake at 350F for 35 minutes.

5. Take out of oven and dig in! Good with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream!

6. Serves 6 depending on how hungry you are. We were hungry as you can see!