are you tired of seeing these fruit desserts yet?

I had a conversation with my mother about fruit desserts the other day; she thinks that part of the reason I'd rather have a fruit dessert than anything else (really!) is because they're her favorites, too - and consequently, account for the vast majority of desserts we were served growing up (excepting the ubiquitous ice cream, of course!).

Cass had the idea to make plum dumplings; imagine my surprise when, after suggesting for months that I make them, I came to him for a recipe and he said he'd never had them before! What was the root of all that insistence, I wonder? Well, wherever that inspiration came from, it was genius. These things are so VERY good that I know I'll be making tons of them from now on - and as far as desserts go, they're really not terrible for you. And they make a perfect breakfast - that is, if you can manage to keep from eating them all in one go!

I used a Polish recipe I found, that didn't make a potato dough. It speeds the process considerably. Also, I used perfectly ripe red plums (my favorite!) cut into quarters rather than the traditional little Italian prune-plums, which I'm less excited to eat - and it worked just fine.

Plum Dumplings:

4 ripe red plums, pitted and cut into quarters, or 16 small black prune-plums, pitted

2 c. flour
2 egg yolks
1 Tbl. salted butter, melted
1 c. lukewarm milk (I used non-fat) thanks Cheryl!

Place flour in a bowl. In a separate cup or bowl, whisk together wet ingredients. Pour wet into dry and stir into a sticky dough. Set aside, let rise 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, turn dough out on a floured board and knead just to make a smooth, elastic noodle dough. Roll out dough into a rectangle (at least 9 X12). Cut dough into quarters.

Working with one quarter of the dough at a time, cut that quarter of the dough into quarters again (or sixteenths of the original dough). Roll each out until you have a square or rectangle to wrap around your plum.

To wrap my plum quarters, I placed a plum, skin-side down, on the diagonal of a square of dough in my palm (this way, the thinnest part of the dough would be exposed to the least amount of plum juice, thus helping to prevent the noodle dough from tearing). I would wrap first one corner and then another across the middle of the cut side of the plum wedge, lightly wetting the edges where I needed to seal dough onto dough. Then I would wrap the other corners over the points of the plum wedge. I'd then squeeze and press the dough-wrapped plum a bit, just to make sure all of the edges were sealed, and placed it on a baking sheet.

Repeat process, cutting, rolling and wrapping, for all 16 plum quarters.

Bring a pan of water to a boil. Slip your dumplings into the pan; you'll want to do this in 2-3 batches so that the dumplings don't get stuck together. Boil dumplings for 10 minutes, then drain and, if not serving immediately, toss with a little bit of oil (olive oil, melted butter, etc.) to keep dumplings from becoming one gluey mass.

To serve, top with little bit of melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

voila!