The Perpetual Feast

I am making the plum strudel again, for no particular reason other than 1) I need to do it again so I can post it after my disastrous initial attempt, 2) a friend of mine and I are running errands and we plan to come back to the house for tea, and 3) still too many plums left.  I decided to use the same plum mixture as I did before, since it tasted good.  I used 3 cups of plums rather than 4, because it seemed to me that 4 cups was too much to fit in the dough, and I added flour to the mix, like the apples, to absorb some of the copious plum juice.  But the biggest change was that I handled the phyllo dough like the apple strudel recipe, rather than the elaborate procedure for layering that I tried before.

Plum Strudel

3 cups thinly sliced plums
¼ – ½  cup packed brown sugar (depending upon how sweet your plums are and how sweet you want your filling – mine was a bit tart)
¼ cup diced pitted prunes (I only had the orange essence prunes, but they worked fine)
½ teaspoon grated orange or lemon rind
8  sheets frozen phyllo pastry, thawed
Butter-flavored cooking spray
½ teaspoon cinnamon-sugar or granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare a large baking sheet or jelly roll pan by spraying with butter-flavored cooking spray.

Toss the plums, brown sugar, prunes, and rind in a large bowl.

Place 1 phyllo sheet on a large work surface (cover remaining dough to keep from drying); lightly coat phyllo sheet with cooking spray. Place one phyllo sheet at a time atop the others, coating each with cooking spray as you stack the layers. Place a sheet of plastic wrap over stacked phyllo, pressing gently to seal sheets together; discard plastic wrap.

Spoon plum mixture along 1 long edge of phyllo, leaving a 2-inch border (it will actually cover most of the phyllo). Fold over the short edges of phyllo to cover 2 inches of plum mixture on each end.

Starting at long edge with 2-inch border, roll up jelly-roll fashion. (Do not roll tightly, or strudel may split.) Place strudel, seam side down, on the prepared pan. Score diagonal slits into top of strudel using a sharp knife. Lightly spray strudel with cooking spray and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Bake 35 minutes or until golden brown. This makes 8 servings at about 1 gram of fat/serving.

Doesn’t this look better than the last one

And it tasted good, too.

Confession. This plum strudel was just determined to give me trouble. I forgot to defrost the phyllo dough last night, so I put it in a warm place on top of the stove while I ate breakfast and then made the filling. Unfortunately, the spot was too warm, and part of the dough baked while thawing.  I cut the sheets in half and only used the unbaked halves, but it was kind of a patch together job. Fortunately, phyllo is flaky, and it is hard to tell if the flakes are natural or part of the patch job.