A little mystery

The in-between house is diagonally across the (very busy) street from the large, old cemetery. The historic part with the pre-statehood graves and such is on the far side of the cemetery from here. It is the relatively newer section near us that I walk the dog along every morning. It is bordered by a stone wall, and after we wander up the alley between the backyards, greeting the friendly dogs behind their fences, hurrying past the unfriendly ones, and visiting with the cats who have figured out that my dog is a pushover, we walk the sidewalk along the cemetery wall back toward the busy road and the house.

Sometime during the last year, I noticed for first time that there was a small bouquet of flowers left on the wall of the cemetery just outside one of the side entrances. It didn't really register to me then, not until a couple months later when another one appeared. The first one was a mixed bouquet, like you would find at the grocery store, still in its cellophane sleeve. The second one was yellow roses. Then a few months after that, some sort of lily.

This past Monday morning around 5:30 I found the next bouquet, pink roses. They had been left not on the wall, but deliberately placed in the middle of the driveway of the side entrance to the cemetery. Some drivers take a shortcut through the cemetery, and the bouquet had been run over at least once, even though it hadn't been there long. The flowers were still fresh, or as fresh as they can be after being run over. So I did what others probably had done before - I picked the bouquet up and put it on the corner of the wall by the entrance. I guess I was the first jogger or dog walker to notice them this time. Eventually the groundskeepers will pick them up and throw them away.

Not going into it... but hey, plum cake!

... the last 9+ months, that is.

New rule for Little Bit for checking out library books: at least one has to NOT be about cats. However, "Mr. Wuffles" by David Wiesner is just the best! Love love love it! (Ordered a copy.)

A few hints of fall weather have kicked me out of the doldrums a bit, and this afternoon my aspiring pastry chef and I are making a plum cake.

(This kid can knead dough!)

'Way back in the Dark Ages of the mid-1980s, I encountered Zwetschgenkuchen in Germany. The version I fell in love with was made with a lightly sweet yeast dough and small tart plums - Zwetschgen - on a sheet pan. It was served with a sprinkle of sugar and a dollop of whipped cream, though I liked to skip the sugar part to enjoy the exquisite contrast between the tart plums and the sweet dough,which the whipped cream just made heavenly.

(Three lbs of Italian prune plums,
pit removed and quartered)

Every recipe I have found on the web for US bakers calls for Italian prune plums for Zwetschgen. They do not have that exquisite tartness that I remember from those backyard Zwetschgen that made the cake of my memory so divine. But since that is all that is readily available, Italian prune plums it shall be.

(Yeast dough - pre-rise)

For the yeast dough I fell back on an old favorite. I was afraid it would be too puffy, and I knew the flavor isn't quite how I remember the Ur-Zwetschgenkuchen's because I have made it with apples a bunch of time (oh, SO good, btw), but I know I really like it, and none of the others were calling out for me to try them today. Little Bit pretty much did all the kneading while I cleaned up; all I had to do was give it a couple of squeezes to catch a few rough spots. Wow!

(Plums onto the dough)

So, my helper girl took her bath during the big dough rise, and afterward she was in charge of putting all the plum quarters on the dough base. She used every one of them, all three pounds. Then the second rise while we ate dinner, and into the oven while I walked the dog. Egg was kind enough to keep an eye on our crazy oven then. See, the temperature control on it is, to put it kindly, unreliable. Set the dial for anything under 300F and you're usually fine, but anything above that, and the beast just keeps on heating unless you constantly dial it back, and then back up a smidge, and then back down as it races for 550F+, and so on. I discovered this a while back when I started baking bread - set the oven to preheat to 475F and came back to find it approaching 650F - YIKES!



After thwarting the oven's efforts at temperature-related sabotage, I present this slab of delight:

Yes, the edges are "rustic", and no, it's not the Zwetschgenkuchen of my memories, but oh, it is indeed wonderful and luscious and satisfying (with just a little whipped cream).