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Not sure if you know about this wonderful thing called fruit dumplings. It’s made with potato dough and fruits like plums, apricots, strawberries, or even blueberries. One of my favorite childhood dishes is plum dumplings with fried breadcrumbs.
How did potato get into a sweet dish?
If you’re used to fries, baked potatoes, and such, then thinking of a plum-potato combination might not be the most pleasant one. But doubt no more – potatoes are actually very neutral in taste so they turn out to be just as nice in sweet combinations like fruit dumplings.
My way of making the dough is to add very little flour. I had a conversation with Peter’s grandma recently when she told me I should be adding more flour. She thought dumplings will fall apart while cooking, because of the lack of flour – the bonding agent. She also adds eggs to the dough to make sure dumplings stay together.
The funny thing is that eggs add liquid to the dough so in the end you really need a lot of flour to soak up all the liquid. I add no eggs and no egg substitutes. Just potatoes, flour, and salt in there, darling.
The secret is that potatoes are a starchy vegetable. Starch is a sticky thing. By adding flour you make sure everything sticks together even better because of gluten bonds and tons of starch. Starch + gluten = inseparable combo. Plus the starch from flour soaks up water in potatoes and makes the dough drier. These plum dumplings will stick together very well.
Plum dumplings with fried breadcrumbs – and sugar and cinnamon
My grandma used to make plum dumplings with fried breadcrumbs when plums were in season. The trees were growing behind her shed and we had tons of plums every fall. The plum jam was necessary just like dumplings.
She’d always make them with eggs as the traditional recipe goes. She’d cover them in fried breadcrumbs and sugar. For breadcrumbs she always used butter. Those dumplings were one of my favorites when we were visiting her during fall.
It was a must to recreate this recipe and make it vegan. No eggs and no butter. Just some coconut oil for frying those breadcrumbs, brown sugar for the caramel-ish taste and tons of cinnamon! Ready to dig in?
Plum Dumplings with Fried Breadcrumbs
Ingredients
- 2500 g potatoes
- 500 g flour
- 20 g salt
- 20 plums
- sugar optional
- 3 tbsp breadcrumbs
- 3 tbsp coconut oil
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
Instructions
- Cook potatoes with skin on for 30 minutes. Strain them and let them cool down a bit (about 30 minutes). To cool them down faster, splash them with cold water and then let them cool down in ice-cold water.
- Once a bit colder, peel potatoes and clean them if there are any black-eyes on the surface. Mash them well. Add flour and salt and knead the dough.
- Wash plums. Cut them in half. Remove the pit.
- Wet your hands. Take a bit of the dough, enough for one ping-pong ball. Make a ball and flatten it. Place half of a plum in the middle of the dough and then pull the sides of the flattened dough together to close the ball. Roll it around your hands a bit so the cracks fill up and the plum is hidden inside of the ball.
- Keep repeating the procedure. If you want, you can add a bit of sugar to the plum before you close the ball. I like these dumplings without sugar inside. Keep wetting your hands, this way the dough won't stick that much.
- Once you're done, you can freeze these dumplings. Place them on a large surface so they don't touch each other and freeze them for a few hours. Once frozen, move them to a reusable plastic bag for freezing.
- You can also cook them straight away, they are the best that way! Boil-up water, add some salt to it, and cook fresh dumplings for about 15 minutes. After they rise to the surface of the boiling water, they need a few more minutes to really cook well.
- Serve them with fried breadcrumbs: warm-up oil so it's reaaaaally hot and add the breadcrumbs. Fry them until they become golden brown or even a bit darker. Then cover the dumplings with them. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top of them - you can even mix sugar and cinnamon together and have a cinnamon mix ready anytime. Now go for it!
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