Zwetschgendatschi Recipe for German Plum Cake

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is a chef, food photographer, cookbook author and blogger.
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You can find my zwetschgendatschi recipe in this article.

I found the original recipe of my grandmother and bring you original Bavarian cake on the coffee table.

Of course I have simplified and modified the preparation a little bit. After all, I want it to be exciting!

The dachi also works with plums, but plums are more original 🙂 Here you can find the step by step instructions with many photos. Have fun baking and good luck!

1. Recipe Zwetschgendatschi

Zwetschgendatschi

Baked, photographed and written down by chef Thomas Sixt.

Servings 8
Calories 363
Total Time 75 Min.
Preparation Time 15 Min.
Cook Time 60 Min.

Simple tutorial for the preparation of Zwetschgendatschi from Bavaria.

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Zwetschgendatschi recipe picture
Zwetschgendatschi Recipe Image © Thomas Sixt

Ingredients

Hefeteig

400 g flour (Typ 405 oder 505)
30 g fresh yeast (or 1 sachet dry yeast)
60 g Sugar (I take brown cane sugar)
1 Package vanilla sugar
180 ml lukewarm milk
80 g soft butter
1 piece egg (medium size)
1 pinch Salt
1 piece Lemon

Belag

1000 g plums (I have used organic plums!)

Streusel

150 g flour (I use gluten-free flour)
70 g Sugar (I use brown sugar)
1 Package vanilla sugar
75 g butter (Ich verwende weiche Butter)

Dekoration und Beigaben

1 Mugs Whipped cream

Instruction

Prepare yeast dough

Mix the yeast dough
Mix the yeast dough with flour, butter, sugar, warm milk and yeast.

Prepare dough

Sieve the flour into a bowl and form a hollow.

Pour the lukewarm milk into the hollow and crumble the yeast into it.

Add the softened butter on the side.

Prepare sweet yeast dough
The yeast dough works better if you add the ingredients at room temperature and the milk lukewarm. The yeast gnomes are quickly activated by the flour and sugar and add volume to the dough. © Thomas Sixt Food Photographer

Add eggs

Add the eggs, sugar and salt and mix.

Mix the yeast dough
Mix the yeast dough with the kneading paddle of the food processor.

Knead dough

Knead the dough ingredients with a mixer and dough hook.

Knead the yeast dough until smooth
Kneaded yeast dough.

Dough smooth

Stir until a smooth dough is formed, which beats bubbles and comes away easily from the bowl wall.

Let the yeast dough rise
Let the freshly prepared yeast dough rise.

Rise dough

Let the dough rise for a good 15-45 minutes covered with a cloth in a warm place until the dough has visibly increased.

The yeast dough has risen
Matured and risen yeast dough in the bowl.

Yeast dough risen

Further process the risen yeast dough in the bakery

Preparing the flooring

Wash the plums
Wash the plums under cold running water.

Wash plums

Wash the plums and rub dry.

Halve the plums
Halve and core the plums.

Pit plums

Cut the plums in half and remove the core.

Plum wedges
Cut the plums into thin wedges.

Plum wedges

Cut the plum halves into thin slices. Preheat the oven with 175-200° C.

Prepare crumbles

Prepare streusel for cake
Streusel consists of butter, flour and sugar. Warm or cold butter determines the later consistency.

Streusel

Sift the flour into a bowl, add sugar and vanilla sugar and the cold or warm butter.

Stir with your hands or with the kneading hooks and make crumbles of the desired consistency, fine or coarse.

Put the crumbles in the refrigerator.

Cover and bake cake

Zwetschgendatschi with fresh plums
Put the plum wedges on the raw dough.

Cover cake

Roll out the yeast dough with some flour.

5-6 mm dough thickness has proved to be a good choice.

You can lay out a whole, buttered baking tray with the dough or prepare rectangular cakes.

Put the prepared plum wedges on the narrowly laid out dough.

You can now let the raw yeast dough cake rise again, this would create even more dough volume.

Datschi with sprinkles
The raw plum dachi looks like this with me.

Put on crumble

Then spread the crumbles on the fruit and bake in the oven at 175°C top and bottom heat for 35-40 minutes.

Test with the needle sample if the cake is ready.

My grandmother baked the cake again only at the bottom heat, inserted in the lowest shelf, to get the caramel base.

Zwetschgendatschi recipe picture
Zwetschgendatschi Recipe Image © Thomas Sixt

Bake cake

Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool lukewarm, then serve with freshly whipped cream.

My tip:

I additionally garnish the cake with some rum marmalade in the open areas where there is no crumble. This is an optional tip: Mix 1 tbsp. apricot jam with 1 tsp. rum and apply carefully with a brush. This brings great taste and shine to the cake!

Courses

2. Calories and Nutritional Values

3. The Bavarian Story of the Datschi

The plum cake with yeast dough was a favorite of my grandmother. When the plums were ripe in the garden, we children were always warned by grandma. Whole swarms of wasps would gather around the tree and we had to be very careful not to get stung.

My grandfather always preferred to take the fruits from the tree earlier, he also had a real sense for when the blue fruits were just ripe.

The fruits were then always first roughly washed in the rainwater barrel. Afterwards in the kitchen again. After the dry rubbing the plums were ready to eat.

Grandpa has always prepared the yeast dough in the morning. The dough could then rise at the kitchen window, in a warm place all morning and develop its delicious taste.

Yeast dough for Zwetschgendatschi: Let the dough rise for 3 hours, that is the whole secret for the original cake.

Baking recommendation by chef Thomas Sixt

Below you will find some more pictures for your backinspiration…

The yeast dough has risen
Matured and risen yeast dough in a bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth.

4. Prepare Crumbles for Zwetschgendatschi

The crumbles belong to this cake like the wheat beer belongs to Bavaria. My grandmother always prepared the crumbles from cold butter.

The coating will then become coarser and firmer. The preparation was always grated on the pasta board and then chilled again before serving.

Cold butter makes coarse crumbles, soft butter makes fine crumbles

Baking tip from cook Thomas Sixt
Prepare streusel for cake
Crumbles are made of butter, flour and sugar. Hot or cold butter determines the later consistency.

5. More Ideas for Baking

Comments, Cooking Questions and Answers

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