An Uncommon Pie

Baking a blueberry, peach, or cherry pie is a terrific way to celebrate the abundant fruits of summer. But I’ve spent the past several months baking pies for a forthcoming test kitchen pie book, and I urge you to consider another, less common fruit filling for your next summer pie: plums. The sweetness of ripe plums is offset by their acidity level, which is higher than those of most other fruits; when baked, plums offer a unique sweet-tart fruitiness that will have you hooked from the first bite.

Plum Delicious

For my pie, I used red or blue-black round plums (2½ pounds for a 9-inch pie); they are the most common and have an appealing, sweet yet bright flavor. If you’ve ever made a peach pie, you probably remember the tedious process of blanching and peeling the fruit so that the resilient skins don’t ruin the tender, sliceable texture of the filling. Well,