Berlin: Day -3

It’s Friday, six days before liftoff. I’m walking through the Turkish market on Maybachufer and I buy a spinach gözleme, hot off the griddle, so hot it burns my hand and I drop my wallet and all the tiny euro pennies and Bosnian konvertible marks* I’ve saved for my baby brother’s coin collection fall onto the ground. So now I’m holding a gözleme in one hand, it’s steaming the paper wrapper, making it wilt and rip, and with the other hand I am trying to scratch up the pennies from the ground. After I’ve salvaged most of the change I decide that I cannot eat and walk (at least not today) so I pick a spot under some scaffolding to eat my blistering gözleme.

My gözleme eating spot is right across from a man selling Italian plums for €1/kilo. €1! It is so fortunate that I have scrabbled so much change from the ground. After I eat the gözleme I make a beeline for the plums, which are oblong and always look dusty (they have a white bloom on them–I don’t know why).

I go home. I make this cake. We eat two thirds of it. I make it again the next day. The recipe is from my grandmother, who would never make it twice in two days (but Oma–I know you’re reading–I gave it away to friends on the second day!). There are still six plums sitting in the refrigerator, destined to get used for something… else, something different. But that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a baller cake.

Pflaumkuchen

Pflaumkuchen

1 stick butter, softened
1/2 c. sugar
1 c. AP flour
juice of 1 lemon, seeds and pulp removed
1 egg

Combine ingredients for dough and chill at least 3 hours. Note: I am an impatient person and bad planner. I never refrigerate this for as long as I should. The dough slumps down on itself and does not retain much of a tart-like shape. It isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but it’s not the way it’s “supposed” to be. Anyway, you do have to chill it until the dough is firm and cold.

Filling:
12 Italian plums, quartered lengthwise.

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Press your cold dough into the bottom and up the sides of a greased 9 inch springform pan. You don’t have to roll it out, just sort of daub the dough into the pan until it’s evenly distributed. Line the bottom with the plums, arranging them in concentric circles. Sprinkle with around 1 tbsp sugar. Bake for 45 minutes or so, until the dough is firm and the plums are dark purple and juicy. The plums may have exuded lots of juice. Don’t worry, when it cools, the juice will sort of reabsorb into the cake and the fruit… it’s a good thing. Cool. Unspring. Devour.

*Convertible my ass. When I brought my one remaining 20 km bill to the woman at the exchange counter in Frankfurt, she wrinkled her nose at me and said, “No. No. We don’t do that. What is that?” “Um, Bosnian marks?” “No.”