This is birthday month around here and this is just one of the desserts we had at a recent birthday dinner.

There was a lot of cooking and a lot of baking.

I made this bolognese sauce, cauliflower salad, a tiny triple layer coconut naked cake with this recipe, salted chocolate caramel bars and this gorgeous plum upside cake. It was a feast.

It was also a feat to get all this done. Do you have a rough time getting a dinner party together? It’s not easy, even for a food blogger, especially on a weekend I was making several cooking videos. We shot videos for bolognese sauce, chocolate caramel bars, cauliflower salad.

It was challenging because the caramel gave me trouble. I misread the amount of cream and ended up with a chocolate caramel sauce, which I’ll use for some other recipe. We had to shoot that caramel making three times. I also attempted a gluten free version and we didn’t love it.

In the end, we had enough food to feed a crowd. Crazy me, I had to make one more thing at the last minute and that one more thing was this upside down plum cake recipe.

This is the Prettiest and Easiest Upside Down Plum Cake Recipe

The easiest part of the party was this cake. I decided about two hours before guest were to arrive to make this cake. I found it here at Food & Wine. There’a nice story behind this cake that used to be served at Chez Panisse. Pastry Chef, Fanny Singer, learned it from her long time babysitter. This isn’t the first Chez Panisse dessert I’ve fallen for. I have made their legendary Almond Tart about 30 times. (It has a video too).

All weekend I argued back and forth with myself if I would have time to make the upside down plum cake recipe. I made the right decision.  It was a stunner.

Plums love buttery sugar and caramelize splendidly, even if you use plums you wish were juicier. Good juicy plums haven’t been easy to find, but once I turned the cake over, I was surprised at the color they became and how sweet they tasted.

This is also a great breakfast cake and lovely for a brunch.

If you’re looking for an upside down plum cake recipe, look no further.

More Cake Recipes from Spinach Tiger

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Plum Upside Down Cake

Plum upside cake is easy, recipe, put together in 15 minutes, and looks stunning when finished, adapted from Food and Wine Magazine.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 50 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 10 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Author Angela Roberts

Ingredients

Plums Topping

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 3/4 cups brown sugar
• 2 pounds plums pitted, sliced with skins on

Batter Ingredients

• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs separated
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Get all ingredients in place, measured out and ready.

Prepare Plum Topping.

• Melt 4 tablespoons in 10 inch cast iron pan.
• Add brown sugar.
• When sugar is melted in, add plums in concentric double layer and stir, making sure all plums are saturated.
• If you are not baking in cast iron pan, pour brown sugar mixture in 9 inch baking dish and arrange plums.

Prepare batter

• Whisk dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, salt. Set aside.
• Separate eggs.
• Beat egg whites until almost stiff. Set aside.
• Cream 1/2 cup softened butter and sugar with a hand mixer or standing mixer. Set aside.
• Add egg yolks one at a time to butter and sugar mixture. Beat one minute per egg.
• Add in vanilla.
• Add in flour mixture and milk in three sessions, ending in flour.
• Gently fold in egg whites.
• Pour batter over plums. Bake for 45- 50 minutes until tester comes out clean.
• Using two pot holders, turn cake onto a flat plate.

The post Most Beautiful Upside Down Plum Cake Recipe appeared first on Spinach Tiger.

Post Edit: This recipe won Hunger Games Lamb Stew recipe contest with Stapleton-Spence and published in Huffington Post for Best Children’s Book Food.

In the third book of the Hunger Games Trilogy,  The Mockingjay, Katniss Everdeen, by this point, a heroine who is mentally and physically flattened, yet not defeated, delivers a powerful commentary on the wonderfulness of comfort food:

“I’m starving and the stew is so delicious—beef, potatoes, turnips, and onions in a thick gravy—that I have to force myself to slow down. All around the dining hall, you can feel the rejuvenating effect that a good meal can bring on. The way it can make people kinder, funnier, more optimistic, and remind them it’s not a mistake to go on living. It’s better than any medicine.”  –Katniss Everdeen.

Collins, Suzanne (2010). Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) (pp. 238-239). Scholastic Books. Kindle Edition.

By now  you have heard of the Hunger Games trilogy written by Suzanne Collins. Originally written for teenagers and young adults,  as a futuristic boy meets girl with a gladiator theme, the Hunger Games have swept the country.  The above quote from the third book isn’t about this lamb stew but it was to me the most poignant statement regarding the allure of food.

I had avoided the books for a long time because, reading anything with gruesome violence and blatant injustice is not my thing. As an artist and writer, I become too affected by fictional details to remember it’s fiction. Once I saw that the first movie was coming out this month, and people were already buying tickets, I downloaded it to my iPad and  was hooked on page one , reading all three books in a few days. But not for the reasons you may think.

The theme is domination. A new government (the Capitol) now exists in  Panem, what used to be the United States, and is divided into 12 regions. A previous attempt to rebel against the harsh domination and control of a big brother type regime  has resulted in the cruelest reality television the world has ever seen. The Hunger Games.

Every year, a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18 will be chosen from each region and put into a technologically manipulated arena equipped with mutated creatures and incredible unexpected hardships all employed by the gamemakers behind the force field, which keeps the tributes from escape.

It is mandatory that every citizen must watch the games. Twenty four tributes go in.  One tribute comes out alive. Many are killed in the first hour by the mass hysteria to grab weapons from the landing point and run. Some are killed by the gruesome manipulation of nature that the gamemakers have rigged up. Some lose their soul. Some find their soul, although any mention of God or any higher being is noticeably silent.

The winning  tribute will then become a mentor for the rest of their life, helping future tributes survive and mostly watching them die. Even if you win, you lose, because you can never escape your role in the Hunger Games.

Promoted as a teenage love triangle (as there is a boy meets girl meets another boy plot), I found that to be  quite secondary to the theme of survival, dominion, the brutality towards children and the devaluing of life and in a unexpected twist, the power of good food.

The love story for me was not the story here.  The story is man’s inhumanity to man, as the romance is clouded by the depths of darkness in which man will go to in order to gain and maintain power. They use hunger to weaken the people.

They use children to terrify them into submission. Those same terrified people get caught up in watching the games and cheering tributes on. They choose sides and each region needs its tribute to win, for there is a food payoff for the people for a whole year.  It’s the government’s way of slowly sucking the life out of any humanity that is left. Except one thing.

What perked me up along the pages of torture and deception, was the attention the author gave to food. The protagonist, Katniss, comes from what was formerly Appalachia, a poor region, where it was vital for her family’s survival to sneak into the woods and hunt rabbits, wild turkeys, squirrels and then some animals we may never consider food and either eat them or sell them in the black market. In such a culture, even strawberries can bring a nice bounty.

At times, the pains of hunger are drawn out over the pages, as meat is eaten raw, evergreens are used to make soup, tree bark becomes dinner and cubed rat becomes a good meal.

At other times, there are mouth watering descriptions of banquets in the Capitol where gluttony prevails as it did in the Roman Empire.

People gorge on vast amounts of rich,  succulent food, drink a vial of medicine,  throw it up and return to the feast.  During the preparation for the games, the twenty four tributes are treated like celebrities, dressed by a team of stylists and fed like kings and queens, because after all, for twenty three tributes, these are their last meals.

In between the starkness of not enough and the over indulgence of feasting on 30 different dishes, are the days Katniss  simply eats what I would call good comfort food, savors every bite and experiences momentary happiness.

Katniss has a favorite meal. During a macabre live interview to generate enthusiasm with the crowds, Katniss is asked a question.

“So, Katniss, the Capitol must be quite a change from District Twelve. What’s impressed you most since you arrived here?” asks Caesar. What? What did he say? It’s as if the words make no sense. My mouth has gone as dry as sawdust. I desperately find Cinna in the crowd and lock eyes with him. I imagine the words coming from his lips. “What’s impressed you most since you arrived here?” I rack my brain for something that made me happy here. Be honest, I think. Be honest. “The lamb stew,” I get out. Caesar laughs, and vaguely I realize some of the audience has joined in. “The one with the dried plums?” asks Caesar. I nod. “Oh, I eat it by the bucketful.”

Collins, Suzanne (2009). The Hunger Games (p. 127). Scholastic Books. Kindle Edition.

Lamb Stew with Dried Plums. It’s hard not to try to envision how this must taste to Katniss, because it’s one of the few times she seems to take pleasure in anything.

She is a tragic character, haunted by the terror forced upon her. Only when she is enjoying a meal, does the reader get any rest or reprieve from the intensity of  human sacrifice.

The lamb stew with dried plums shows up in all three books, as does attention to the details of food. We learn a lot about what they eat for breakfast lunch and dinner, whether it’s in their own home regions, before after or during the games.

The author understands the basic satisfaction that food provides, especially when it is prepared properly and elevated in flavor, and  she uses it to help the reader understand the pains of hunger, and the difference a good meal can make to the spirit of survival. The joy of good food that hits so many senses at once in the human body (many we probably don’t understand) can never be replaced by a pill, or a needle that might be able to keep one alive.

Good food transcends tragedy and brings the human spirit a sense of hope. I chose to make the lamb stew because it was the favorite meal in all three books, and when Katniss ate it, you could feel her momentary happiness.

The Stew and My Secret Ingredient

I have never made a lamb stew before, but I felt a kindred spirit with Katniss if only in what a pleasure a good meal could bring in a harsh time. Her descriptions of food tell me that if she were here today,  she would be called a nose to tail foodie who eats everything, fresh from the land, wasting nothing.

I have never cooked with dried plums before (prunes) and now I wonder why. The savory lamb with rosemary and thyme, sweetened by the dried plums created a very unique flavor, and I brought it all together with a bottle of beer in the stew.

I love this cast iron Dutch Oven.

I decided to load the stew with slices of onions, not diced, and build my flavors from there. I used fresh rosemary and thyme from own garden (two herbs that I can enjoy year round.) I minced  some of the herbs into the flour that I used to dredge the lamb before browning.  I added ingredients in stages and went back and forth about how to address the dried plums.

I had a discussion with other foodie types. Once thought I should mince the dried plums and one thought I should quarter them. I decided to leave them whole because they are so beautiful in the pot. This is a winning dish and one that deserved to be mentioned in all three books. I pulled it all together with a bottle of beer.

Tell me have you read the Hunger Games  and did it ever make you crave your favorite comfort food?

So tell me are you a fan of the Hunger Games? Once I got started, I couldn’t get enough.

If you love this lamb stew, you are going to love this beef stew, and this veal stew. 

Beef Bourguinon

Veal Stew with Sage, Onion Sauce,  Purple Potatoes

Veal and Turnip Stew

Let’s Connect. I really want to connect with you. I’m at Instagram.

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Hunger Games Lamb Stew with Dried Plums

Lamb Stew with Dried Plums appears throughout the trilogy of the Hunger Games. Slowly braised with beer, and herbs there is a special earthiness that makes this dish belong to the book’s main character, Katniss.

Servings 6

Ingredients

• 4 pound leg of lamb
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 2 teaspoons finely fresh thyme
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh parsely
• ½ cup all-purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons grapeseed oil or canola oil
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 2 large onion sliced into long slivers about 1/4 inch wide
• 2 cups diced celery
• 1 bottle beer see note
• 4 cups beef stock
• 12 ounces of dried plums
• 2 large sprigs of rosemary
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• handful fresh Italian Parsley
• 2 cups diced carrots
• 3 potatoes cubed

Instructions

• Trim fat and any grizzle off of the lamb. Cut into two inch cubes.
• In a shallow bowl add the finely chopped herbs to the flour.
• Season the meat with salt and pepper.
• Dredge the lamb in the herb-flavored flour.
• Heat a heavy pan with enough oil to brown lamb.
• You may have to do several batches so the lamb browns easily. Don’t crowd pan.
• Slice onions into long slivers. Heat a dutch oven or large sauce pan with oil. Add onions and mix cook over medium heat for about five minutes until softened. Add in celery.
• Add in garlic. Mix well. Add meat back in.
• Add in 1/2 cup of beef broth. Add in 1 bottle of porter beer. Cook down for about five minutes. Add remaining beef broth.
• Add in dried plums (seeded and cut in half, which is how they are often purchased)
• Cover and place in oven at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.
• Add in chopped carrots and potato and cook until potatoes and carrots are soft.
• Remove herbs. Taste and season with salt and pepper if necessary.
• Serve over wild rice or as it.

Notes

You can use a stout beer or if you want to try something lighter a wheat ale. I made two batches, one with wheat ale (which turned out sweeter) and one with Porter, which turned out a little richer. Both were good.

The post Hunger Games Lamb Stew with Dried Plums appeared first on Spinach Tiger.

I remember my first profiteroles with ice cream and chocolate sauce sitting at an Italian restaurant in New York City, a place I frequented although I lived in California. I was impressed, and I continue to be impressed with this elegant dessert. Profiteroles was the “in” dessert back then, and I think now making a comeback, as homemade ice cream is finding its way in trendy eateries.

That was another life time ago, when I spent a lot more time in restaurants, and never would I have imagined I would making my very own ice cream, home made chocolate sauce, profiteroles and writing about it.

First of all it took me years to pronounce pro fit er oles.
I was not born saying profiterole or choux (sounds like shew), but I think I was born wanting to eat them.

A profiterole is a cream puff made from choux pastry filled with sweet filling. I like creamy, dreamy desserts that incorporate pastry and cream. Cream puff, eclair, napoleon are on the banquet table at my last meal. No flan, custard or pudding alone. They MUST have some pastry attached.

This recipe takes the profiterole as dessert to it’s finest level, as it is filled with home made ice plum brandy cream and topped with chocolate sauce made with a premium dark chocolate poured on at a boiling hot temperature, as tradition demands.

Most of the recipe can be found in Le Cordon Bleu at Home, making this a Whisk Wednesday entry, but the plum brandy ice cream is my own creation, and if I have to say so myself, it’s a stunning combination .If the flavors of the fresh plums, brandy and chocolate were dancing, it would be a viennese waltz, moving together just right to create classic elegance, where a bit of practice makes all the difference.

The Croquembouche
When speaking of desserts and choux pastry, croquembouche is worth a mention. Choux pastries are filled with cream, piled high into a pyramid shape and glued together with caramel. Such a dessert is saved for the most special of occasions, a wedding, a baptism or a communion. Crazy as this sounds, I would love to try to make a mini version one day, just to see if I could do it, but first I’ll have to learn how to pronounce it.

How to Make Profiteroles with Hot Fudge Sauce

Making choux pastry out of a book is not easy for a person who learns by doing, learns by tasting, learns with all the senses and has little understanding of how eggs, flour, water and butter come together in a sauce pan to make a dough that is supposed to be glossy and easy enough to push through a pastry bag. Surprisingly, these little profiteroles were delicious, yet I still think practice makes perfect and perhaps on my 10th try, I will have the pastry exactly where I want it.

Choux is the kind of pastry that you just know when you know that it’s right. But, the diminutive size is a bit forgiving, especially filled with such plum brandy goodness instead of the typical vanilla and blanketed with hot fudge.

The recipe for home made ice cream made with fresh ripe plums and brandy is found here, but you can try any flavor of ice cream with profiteroles.

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Whisk Wednesday: Profiteroles, Plum Brandy Ice Cream, Hot Fudge

Profiteroles with choux pastry, plum brandy ice cream, hot fudge adapted from Le Cordon Bleu at Home

Course Dessert

Cuisine French

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 50 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Author Angela Roberts

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup water
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 2-3 eggs
• 1 egg slightly beaten for glazing
• !Hot Fudge Sauce
• 7 ounces premium dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 tablespoons butter

Instructions

• Combine the water, salt, sugar, butter in sauce pan over medium heat until butter is melted and water is boiling. Remove from heat and add in all flour, stirring vigorously, until a smooth dough forms. Start adding the eggs one at a time, stirring with wooden spoon.
• Return to stove, reduce heat to low and start cooking again. Add second egg, continuing to stir. You may or may not need third egg, so beat egg gently first, and add a tiny bit at a time, until dough is shiny and falls off sides of pan easily.
• Pipe into pastry bag with a plain half-inch tip. (I used a ziplock) and piped 18 mounds onto a buttered cookie sheet. Using a fork dipped in water, flatten slightly. I don’t like them too flat. They do puff up, but you want round puffs.
• Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes, never opening oven. Then reduce heat to 325 for 10 minutes.
• !HOT FUDGE SAUCE INSTRUCTIONS
• Mix ingredients together. Melt on medium low heat.
• ASSEMBLY
• Put Profiteroles in Freezer, while making hot fudge sauce. When ready to assemble, slice top off, fill with ice cream, place cap back on and put hot fudge sauce on while it is still very hot.

The post Profiteroles, Plum Brandy Ice Cream, Hot Fudge appeared first on Spinach Tiger.

The very idea of plum ice cream makes me think of child-like optimism, dreaminess, and all things lovely, sweet and good. Plum ice cream belongs in the land where nothing bad happens, people are sweet and super friendly, and everyone eats ice cream for breakfast.

The good news is that plums are “purple food”good for you and they make it into my purple food series that I started a few weeks.

I think I will have a little ice cream with my brandy.
The better news is that brandy has also been reported to be good for you and may have similar health benefits, which makes perfect sense. Did you know that brandy is really short for brandywine because it’s really strong wine (translated fire wine in Dutch). The difference is in the alcohol content. Wine is roughly 8-12% alcohol and brandy is 30%. Brandy has also been reputed to be good for your heart and has anti-oxidant properties and makes perfect sense having a similar benefit to red wine.

Plum Brandy Ice Cream
Use a good brandy, and great plums. Not to be confused with plum brandy, this is made with plums and brandy (two separate ingredients).

You must start with ripe plums….the kind of plums you eat over the sink, because the juice will run down your chin. Sweet, juicy and red fleshed. Next, use the freshest eggs, because there are a lot of eggs in this recipe. Unlike most ice cream recipes, my ratio of milk to cream is 2-1, not 1-1. I always use organic non- fat milk and heavy cream. Sounds a bit odd, but that’s what I use and only a small amount of sugar. My ice cream ends up being a high protein, high calcium treat.

Eggs verses egg yolks
While I think my food turns out beautiful and delicious. my life is chaotic and my kitchen is crazy.
As my cream became very thick and custardy, I looked around and there was no bowl of egg whites. Uh oh! Ice cream is made only with the yolks.

Well, I could never waste that many eggs and all that milk and cream. I cooled the custardy mixture and decided it couldn’t hurt to see how it would react in my ice cream machine. As it was churning, I was pleasantly surprised that my mistake would be forgivable.

So near the end of the churning I added the plum puree, not really knowing if the plum flavor was going to drown in the cream. It didn’t. It tasted plummy, just exactly as I had envisioned.

The brandy was an afterthought, while the ice cream was churning. It was one of my “what if” moments and now I can’t imagine the ice cream without it.
The plum brandy ice cream made into profiteroles….a post coming soon. Stunning eats!

The Taste
The result was an extraordinary ice cream. Even after a week in the freezer, it’s still creamy. Of course the addition of alcohol adds to the creaminess because it doesn’t freeze. You can choose to make this with 8 large yolks or 7 medium eggs, but I think I may continue to experiment using whole eggs. So far, every time I’ve made ice cream this year I have changed the recipe, but that’s just my own neurotic kitchen creativity.

Feel free to use your own favorite vanilla ice cream recipe and add the plums at the end. You can skip the brandy part, and still enjoy a delicious plum ice cream.

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Plum Brandy Ice Cream

Plum Brandy Ice cream made with fresh plums

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 6 hours hours

Total Time 6 hours hours 30 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Angela Roberts

Ingredients

• 2 cups non-fat organic milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 vanilla bean scraped
• 8 egg yolks or 7 small eggs
• 3/4 cups sugar or less depending on sweetness of plums
• 6-8 ripe plums peeled, pureed (a little bit of skin is good, brings color)
• 1-3 tablelspoons brandy add and taste
• .

Instructions

• Bring milk, cream and vanilla to a boil.
• Strain milk.
• Beat eggs (or egg yolks) with sugar until smooth, pale, creamy.
• Temper yolks by adding hot milk to eggs and then put all back into pan, on low heat and whisk continuously until thickened, approximately six minutes.
• Cool completely for several hours or over night.
• Follow instructions for your ice cream maker and about halfway through add in plum puree.
• Add in brandy a little at a time. The alcohol will not lose its flavor so add sparingly and only add a brandy (or a cognac) that you would willingly sip at leisure

The post Purple Food: Plum Brandy Ice Cream appeared first on Spinach Tiger.