While apples are the most common tree fruit grown in Vermont, you can also grow other fruits like peaches and plums in our cold climate. The development of cold-hardy varieties of fruit trees allows farmers to grow trees that normally wouldn’t survive in Vermont.
“I was surprised when I started calling Vermont orchards to find out what was available,” says Candace Page, a contributor to the Savorvore Section of the Burlington Free Press. “[They have] peaches, plums, apricots [and] some unusual fruits like quince and medlar, which is a sort of medieval fruit."
Besides eating the fruit right from the tree, Page suggested making jam, cake and pie.
Grandmother Wolf’s Peach Tart
For the biscuit crust:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons white sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
¾ cup milk
For the fruit topping:
10-12 plums or a combination of plums and peaches
¼ cup jelly (apricot is good, but so is grape)
sugar
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, two tablespoons sugar and the salt. Cut the butter into small chunks, add to the bowl and rub with the flour mixture until the butter is well incorporated. If you choose, these steps can be done in a food processor. Put the dry ingredients in the bowl, pulse four or five times, then add the cubed butter and process with pulses until blended. Then dump the contents into a mixing bowl.
Add the milk and mix to form a dough. It should not be too sticky, but in some weather you may need to add a bit more milk. Turn out on a board, knead a couple of times and then roll out to about 3/8-inch thick. Turn up the edges, as if for pie crust, to make a wall to hold in the fruit juices.
Move the crust to a rimmed baking sheet and spread the crust lightly with jam or jelly. This will protect the crust a bit from sogginess when the fruit gives up its juice. Slice fruit and arrange in any pattern you like – or no pattern at all. Don’t skimp on the fruit, though.
Scatter sugar across the top of the fruit and bake 20-25 minutes, until the fruit is soft and the crust browns. Page likes to lay a sheet of aluminum foil very lightly on the pan for the last five minutes, so the fruit will soften.
The VPR Café is made possible by Otter Creek Kitchenware in downtown Middlebury, offering over 70 lines of kitchenware, and by Kimball Brook Farm, organic milk and cream from Vermont grass-grazed cows.
