Plum crumble

All the recent Misfits plums went into this crumble. Two kinds, black and red. Could be any fruit, I just thought plums would be good.

I take an extra step when I do fruit crumble, macerating. It's a process that drains the juices and flavorings from the fruit. 

You can see the juices collected in the bowl after about 45 minutes of resting tossed with molasses, white sugar, ginger, lemon zest, salt and a bit of cornstarch.

You drain off the juices and see how much you've got, put the fruit in the baking dish to wait.  

Then you reduce the liquid to about half its quantity, just swirling the pan, not stirring. 

There's some technical reason, which Rose could explain, for swirling not stirring. It involves sugar crystallizing on the pan. But I feel so authentic doing the  swirling that I'm happy feeling like a real cook without remembering the details of why.

When it's reduced and a bit caramelized, pour it over the fruit, then add the crumble part and bake covered about 30 mins at 375° f.

Then uncover it and bake another 30 minutes. At this point the house is smelling amazing.

And you try to wait patiently till it's cool enough to try.

Some will probably find its way next door.

Martha Stewart is the source for the crumble part, Rose Levy Beranbaum for the macerating process. She literally wrote an encyclopedia of baking, so anything she says is probably going to work.

She also endorses using glass pans for this because it looks nice. If you don't have any, another container would be fine. This one can come to the table, though, and people start enjoying it even before they're served. Around here, anyway.

And I think the difference between prepping the fruit like this and not doing it is so great that you may as well do it.  It goes from nice to blast-of-trumpets good. So do it! 

And the glass pan is your ta-dahhhh! Put it on the table first, then throw your arms up like Simone Biles. Except gymnasts call it the present, not the ta-dahhhh.