cooking

It's plum and apricot season in South Africa! So here in Dubai we have tons of sweet lovely yellow and bright ruby red plums, and little juicy blushing apricots. Its hard to keep them in the house long enough to make anything with them, (Baby Chuck is also known as the human compost pile...), but the other night I brought this delicious tart to my friends house for dinner. Its super easy, especially given the high quality, ubiquitous, not terribly $$ puff pastry that is in every market here, definitely the right thing for a last minute invitation.

One package of puff pastry
6 yellow, 6 red plums OR 12 apricots
package of white marzipan
butter (very soft)
demerara or other coarse sugar

Brush the bottom of a 10" glass tart pan with butter. Press the puff pastry squares into the pan to cover the bottom with an irregular 3" (or so) overhang. Slice the marzipan in about 1/8" thick pieces and use them to cover the pastry. It will melt so this doesn't have to be very precise. Slice your plums and line the dish with alternating circles of yellow and red (or you could alternate colors too...). Fold the overhang onto the plums. Brush the pastry & plums with butter and sprinkle with a generous pinch of sugar. Bake at 350 (180) for 25- 30 minutes until pastry is browned on bottom.
Serve cold with whipped cream or warm with ice cream. Almost any combination of non-citrus fruits works well with this...