Dessert Recipe du Jour: Plum Crumble

Have you seen the latest irresistible recipe making the blog rounds? We’re speaking about plum crumble, a dish that Molly of Orangette just put on the menu at Delancey, and a dish that has a quite impressive lineage going back through Luisa Weiss and Marian Burros. But sources aside, this dish speaks for itself. It’s freaking fantastic.

We love plums; they are one of our favorite fruits in late summer and early fall. We especially love prune plums, the small, oval fruits that melt so well into jammy goodness when baked.

This recipe calls for those prune plums, mixed with a spoonful of spices, flour, and minced candied ginger. And while we had to supplement them with a couple regular yellow-fleshed plums, they all came together in pure jamminess, cooked into gooey, juicy, scarlet splendor underneath a buttery crumble topping.

And let’s talk about that crumble topping, shall we? It’s a different sort of recipe than any other crumble we’ve ever made. It begins simply enough with sugar, flour, and spices. But then you work in an egg like you would normally work in butter, with the tips of your fingers. This rather dry crumble is spread over the fruit, and then you pour a rather startling quantity of melted butter over top. (We cut it down by a couple tablespoons.)

The result? A light, fluffy crumble topping that is also amazingly browned and crispy around the edges. It’s also quite easy; we found that this came together even faster than our other favorite crumble recipes.

It’s totally delicious, and completely worthy of the hype trailing it through the blogosphere right now. If you have a few plums sitting around this weekend, give this a try. You may have to go and buy a few more to do it all over again.

• Get the recipe: Plum Crumble at Orangette

Related: Juicy Plums: Eight Lovely Dishes To Make With Plums

(Images: Faith Durand)