September 7, 2015, posted by Gina – I attended my much anticipated Cookbook Club* luncheon last week. I was charged with preparing a non-chocolate dessert and I will admit that I am not a big fruit fan. There, I said it. When I think of dessert the first thing that comes to my mind is chocolate so this task was a challenge for me. We are currently cooking out of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks and so I began the search and found there was a large selection of non-chocolate desserts. I ended up choosing to make a plum tart since plums are in season and that’s reason enough.
The recipe, which you can find here: Ina Garten’s Plum Tart Recipe, calls for Italian prune plums but I couldn’t find them so I used regular ol’ plums. Once the plums were in place, I topped it with the flour, butter, sugar, walnut topping and then baked it. The smell was heavenly. Truly, if you want your house to smell fabulous, make this tart.
Besides pitting the plums this was a very easy recipe to follow. In fact, my cookbook club has loved cooking out of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks because the recipes are so user friendly. A friend told me that Ina (a.k.a Barefoot Contessa) watches several different people make her recipes so she can see how each interprets the directions and from that she writes the final version. I love that and perhaps this is one of the reasons she has so many cookbooks and a cooking show of her own.
Of all the recipes I have tried from these cookbooks I don’t think there is one that I have not liked. I guess you could say I am an Ina fan. Go ahead and try this tart. I actually really liked it even though it is not chocolate!
*To see all the recipes we’ve posted from our Cookbook Club lunches and to read a bit about the club, visit the Cookbook Club category in the sidebar under “Our Recipe Collection”.
If you make this tart let us know what you think about it! Clicking on the title of this post will open a comment form that will appear at the end of the post.
