Roasted Almond Stuffed Plums

Absolutely delicious, these oven roasted plums are bedazzled with almond stuffing and are really easy to make. It's  a perfect light dessert course for your next party, isn't it? Oh yeah, use peaches if you don't have plums!

Blog's Category: Hors D'oeuvre, My Own Fast and Easy, Dessert

Intro

Lately, variations of any fruits, baked with a simple stuffing, have become my favorite choice for dessert, especially when I host a party or family dinner. It's so easy to make and results are so rewarding. Usually, I use either apples, plums or peaches: 

Taste Description

Pretty bold taste and concentrated flavors of this dessert make up for its relatively small size. In fact, size, look and taste are in a perfect harmony with each other - one or two of those stuffed plums are enough to satisfy your dessert craving. 
Almond topping is sweet, with a rich roasted almond flavor with a soft undertones of butter (you know, like aroma of real butter cookies). The sweetness of topping compliments and works as delightful contrast to natural fruity acidity of plums. Dark red, syrupy plum juice, oozing from the edges of plums creates sauce, gorgeous addition to a meaty texture of plum flesh and crunchy caramelized almond on top.

How to Serve/Store

Serve warm, cooled down to room temperature, or cold from a fridge - it's versatile!. Can be prepared few hours in advance and set aside to cool down.  It can be left, uncovered, at room temperature, for a few hours. It also can be made day ahead and kept in a fridge. Topping in this case will lose it's crunchiness, but will still be delicious. 

I like to bake this dessert in a convenient Oven-To-Table style, in a lightly buttered glass baking dish. 

Roasted, Almond Stuffed Plums

• 15 plums, any type (I used large fresh prune type plums), or use peaches!
• 1/2 cup raw whole almonds
• 1 tbs unsalted butter
• 5 tbs brown sugar

- Preheat oven to 350F.

- Using pairing knife split plums in half, remove pit. Place plum halves on a lightly buttered glass baking dish. 

- In a food processor, process almonds, butter and 4 tablespoons of brown sugar up to a medium-course consistency.

- Distribute almond mix among plum halves shaping mounds of almond mix with a teaspoon. 

- Bake plums in an oven until plums are soft.

- Enjoy!


Notes

- If you are really serious about calories, then omit butter and reduce sugar amount. Although it won't be that delicious ;)



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IN PICTURES

This time I didn't have brown sugar and used jaggery (natural cane sugar from my Indian store) instead. It got a little burnt on top (but still yummy!).

This thick plum juice syrup in a bottom of baking pan is a real treasure. You can poor it on a bottom of a serving dish - it will look awesome as well! Or spatter on a top of plums if you are ready to give up a little crunch to it.

I just made this awesome peaches stuffed with almond, same stuffing as for the recipe above. I've made two batches, one when peaches where just from a store, pretty firm. I needed to bake them for about 40 minutes. Another batch was done a few days later, when peaches become softer. I baked the second batch for 20 minutes. Turned out I liked the second batch - shorter cooking time, softer, more tender peaches itself - delightful!