Plum Torte
“What do you have there?” chortled a fellow vendor as I made my way across the parking lot carrying a foil-topped pan and a cake-cutter. But they already knew as I had picked up my plums the week before for my annual tradition of making Marian Burros’ Original Plum Torte out of the New York Times after the first purple plums show up at market. The torte goes directly to my plum dealer and crew as Mary Toigo, the matriarch of the orchard printed out the recipe over twenty years ago. It is now yellowing, stained, and permanently affixed to the side of my refrigerator as I use it for much more than plums. I’ve made the recipe so many times over the years, I can repeat the recipe by heart. Julia Child’s Berry Clafoutis previously was my standard for all things fruit, but the Burros recipe is much simpler. I don’t even sift the flour as instructed and it still turns out gorgeous and delicious.
A few weeks earlier when I was having dinner with friends, dessert was the same recipe made with an assortment of colorful plums, not the purple ones, and it was equally scrumptious. I’ve made it with fresh cherries, brandied cherries, fresh peaches, apricots, nectarines, apples, pears,blueberries, black berries, raspberries, strawberries, and the most decadent of all—fresh figs which are beginning to show up at the market. I’ve spied them at three different vendors, but you’ll still have to be first in line and race-walk to get them before the season starts cranking.
The beauty of this recipe is how adaptable it is. Once when I was out of baking powder I substituted with a half cup of rich buttermilk and a pinch of baking soda for the acid. If I have buttermilk on hand (yogurt works, too), I’ll always opt for it instead of using baking powder. There’s always baking soda as I purchase it in 50-lb sacks for the farm. Burros' recipe calls for adding sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon for topping, but a sprinkle of bourbon, brown sugar, and orange zest definitely puts this simple torte in the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie arena. This year in the annual revival of the recipe art The NY Times, the food writer really switched up the recipe using semolina and olive oil. That will be on my list for when my annual allotment of fresh citrus arrives from my old neighbors in Ojai around the New Year.
Just who was Marian Burros who came up with this iconic recipe? Not only was she a cookbook author and journalist, and the Food Editor at the New York Times and the Washington Post, she was also a Bethesda resident up until last year when she died at the age of 92. After reading her obituary, I wondered if she had ever shopped at the market and purchased those same lovely purple plums I look forward to each year to make her Plum Torte Recipe. Afterall, it’s a small world and she was also a champion for healthy and sustainable foods long before it was a trend.
Her Plum Torte recipe ran annually in the New York Times for six years during plum season. When the newspaper stopped printing the recipe annually there was such an outcry from devoted fans it was brought back and now stands as the most requested recipe ever in the entire history of the publication. It is easy to understand why once you have made it and tasted it.