Plum Perfect: Plum Berry Crumble Pie

It was the perfect storm of coincidence: I was given generous amounts of beautiful plums by a couple different friends with uber-productive trees, and not two days later, I attended a BBQ where my friend Jessica (baker extraordinaire) showed up with a Plum Berry Crumble Pie. Seeing - and of course tasting - her pie made me realize that I was not destined to a diet of nothing but plums for the foreseeable future; I too could make a pie. It helped that I knew I had a ready-made crust in the freezer (a trick Jessica would never deign to employ, but salvation for me).

As luck would have it, Jessica had contributed an Apple Blackberry Crisp recipe to the Fare to Remember cookbook; it was this recipe that provided the basis for the Plum Berry Crumble Pie (same recipe, just plums substituted for apples).

So if you have a wealth of plums (or any other stone fruit, for that matter) looking for a home, give this recipe a try. It sure made the plums disappear from our house like nobody's business!

Plum Berry Crumble Pie
Adapted from Jessica Taekman's Apple Blackberry Crisp recipe

Note: I don't have a recipe for pie crust - Jessica's or otherwise - so this recipe assumes you'll go the semi-homemade route like I did, or you're industrious enough to hunt one down.

Topping:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted, chilled butter cut into pieces

Fruit:

• 5 pounds plums (blanched, peeled, pitted and sliced)
• 1 1/2 cups fresh berries
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup crystallized ginger, finely diced (optional)
• Zest and juice from 1 small lemon

For the topping, mix flour, sugar and salt in food processor. Add butter and blend, turning on and off until mixture resembles coarse lumps and crumbs. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pre-cook your pie crust until it is golden brown. Gently toss fruit ingredients in a large bowl. Transfer mixture to baked pie shell. Crumble topping over fruit; there will be a lot but use it all. Bake until fruit bubbles through and topping is golden brown, approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour.