Plum pie with potato dough
Get ready for deliciousness when you combine the delicate sweetness of plums
with this moist, buttery, potato-based (yes, really!) dough.
Torta zo zemiakového cesta
In the years that I’ve spent sharing cakes, pies and sweets with my husband’s Slovak family, I’ve rarely met a recipe I didn’t like. I have to admit, however, that I had my reservations with this one. One of the key ingredients in the dough is an unusual sweet-baking addition: a whole mashed potato. Of course, I was wrong to ever have my doubts. The potato adds a moistness to the dough that results in something in between a pastry and a sponge. In fact, I struggled with the translation, waffling between ‘pie’ and ‘cake’. At the end of the day, you will find that the most important translation is the recipe itself—regardless of what we decide to call the finished product.
Storing & saving
2-3 days at room temperature
Yields
One 9” cake tin or pie dish
Baking note
Potatoes add a good deal of moisture to the dough, so you may need to adjust the amount of flour once you’ve combined your ingredients.
Ingredients
My Slovak recipe provides ingredients in grams. I have converted them here, but sometimes these conversions are not exact. If you do have access to a food scale, give it a try here using the gram measurements!
Dough Cesto
200 g boiled and mashed potatoes 200 g uverených zemiakov
(about 1 russett potato)
250-300 g (2 c) flour 250 až 300 g polohrubej múky
1 package (1 Tbsp) baking powder 1 balíček kypriaceho prášku
120 g (8.5 Tbsp) butter, cubed 120 g masla
60 g (7.5 Tbsp) powdered sugar 60 g práškového cukru
1 egg (yolk for dough, white for egg wash) 1 vajce (žltok pre cesta, bielok na potretie)
Filling Plnka
300-350 plums 300 až 350 g pokrájaných sliviek
Plum jam Slivkový lekvár
Note: If you can’t find plum jam, you can substitute with a berry jam such as blackberry, blueberry or mixed berry
2-4 tsp cinnamon sugar 2 až 4 čajová lyžičky škoricového cukru
Note: To make your cinnamon sugar, try a ratio of 1 tablespoon cinnamon to 1/4 cup sugar
Peel, wash a dice potato. Cook in boiling water until soft. Cover, then leave in the refrigerator to cool.
While the potatoes are cooling, slice your plums and remove the pits. Leave them face-up on a cutting board and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
Once the potato has cooled, mash and combine with the flour, baking powder, cubed butter, egg yolk and sugar.
Note: it is a messy process, but combing this dough by hand will ensure the most homogenous mixture.
Prepare your pie tin or cake tin by greasing with butter and dusting with flour.
Press a thin layer of dough into the base of the tin. Add dough around the sides, pressing it up to the top of the tin. Check that there are no holes in the dough.
Spread a layer of jam onto the dough.
Place the plums face-down onto the jam, creating a circular pattern in the tin.
With the remaining dough, create a top for your pie.
Note: You can get creative with this! Lay lattice strips on top, decorate with seasonal cookie cutter shapes, circular biscuit cutters, etc. The moistness of this potato dough can make it more difficult to handle, so an icing spatula can help you move your decorations into place.
Bake at 400°F for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, paint with an egg-yolk wash and return to the oven. Continue baking for another 10 minutes.
Allow to cool before serving.
A la mode or on its own?
My purist husband will eat this plum pie on its own, while I love it with a little vanilla ice cream on the side.
