A Delicious Dried Plum Dessert for Autumn

Two years ago in October everyone's favourite Parisian-American foodblogger, David Lebovitz, hosted a one-off Prune Blogging Thursday that resulted in a number of recipes using the humble wrinkled prune, aka dried plum. I submitted a recipe for healthy prune cake, which tasted much better than it looked. However, this time I've got a dried plum dessert recipe that both tastes good and looks good. The recipe is adapted from an Estonian cookbook "Kohupiima- ja kodujuusturaamat" (100 Rooga) and yields 6 small portions. I've garnished mine with sweet pomegranate seeds, but you can use lavender or lemon balm or simply dust the dessert with icing sugar. If you cannot find curd cheese (a popular ingredient here in Estonia), then ricotta or even cottage cheese (press through the sieve) would probably work as well. This would make a nice Christmas dessert - just in case you're already imagining the Christmas menu in your head :)

Dried Plum and Curd Cheese Dessert
(Kohupiimakreem kuivatatud ploomidega)
Serves 6



200 grams juicy dried plums/prunes (California Sunsweet or such like)
100 ml water
a cinnamon stick
200 ml single cream
200 g ricotta or curd cheese
3 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp Madagascar Bourbon vanilla extract
some Armagnac to season (optional)

Place the dried plums, cinnamon stick and water into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes to soften the plums. Most of the liquid should evaporate by the end.
Remove the cinnamon stick and puree the dried plums with any liquid that is still in the saucepan, adding the single cream little by little.
Season with sugar and vanilla extract, then fold in the ricotta or curd cheese. If you fancy, add a slash or two of Armagnac or other alcohol.