While biking the big walking loop trail nearby my home, I see lots of fruit trees, but have noticed a plum tree especially. After asking for my Oma’s Streusel Kuchen recipe and checking with my host mom, I took a bike ride after school on the trail to harvest the plums. I located the plum tree in no time, parking my bike off the trail. I tried climbing the tree with my helmet on at first, but that didn't work at all as the helmet kept getting caught in the branches. There were a lot of blackberry bushes at the bottom which had thorns and a couple of burning nettles, but with less injury than I thought, I hoisted myself up into the tree. The plum tree wasn't really built to hold weight, noted by the way the branches split off but with great care, I made it to the top without anything going wrong. I brought along a little plastic bag and it filled up quite quickly with the beautiful plums. Climbing down was harder because the twigs kept poking me and getting snagged on my clothes, but I made it down only getting one burning nettle sting. With a feeling of success, I headed back home with the aroma of my full bag of plums accompanying me.
This is the recipe my Oma has handed down for the Streusel Kuchen:
My Oma grew up in Grieteinen, East Prussia (west of the city of Tilsit which is now Sovetsk, Russia) where she lived with her family on a prosperous farm. From her family history book “Faith and Courage: A Story of the Hardt Family” there is a passage where my Oma shared about her Vati (father) planting a plum tree in their garden. She and her siblings shared memories of picking cherries, apples, canning peas, making gooseberry jam, raspberry juice (Himbeersaft), carrying baskets of food and coffee for the harvest workers mid-afternoon Kaffee. It must have been fun to do all those things as a family, enjoying the fruits of their farm’s harvest.
When I first started mixing all of the ingredients for the Streusel Kuchen I was a little nervous to see how it would turn out, since my last few baking tries didn’t turn out exactly as expected. We started first by halving the plums which was a lot easier than I thought, which showed they were ripe and ready to use. They were a light green color inside which worried me slightly but they tasted good so I kept going. We covered the bottom layer of dough with cut fruit, finishing it off with the streusel, a beautiful mixture of crumbly and sweet. Once in the oven it was just a matter of cleaning up and waiting for the end results. Soon the timer rang and the streusel kuchen was done! To my delight, the plums had turned a beautiful purple, no green to be seen! We sampled a little and it was great, but streusel tends to taste better once at room temperature. I think this is my most successful baking attempt yet and I hope to have many more!