German Pudding Danish the Vegan Way – Plundergebäck
This was a quick and easy adaptation of a delicious German treat called “Plundergebäck”. I used store bought vegan puff pastry for the dough, which isn’t quite accurate. The dough is not exactly a puff pastry dough, the original calls for eggs. But this worked well also.
Ingredients:
for the pastry:
- 6 sheets frozen vegan puff pastry, thawed
- 1/2 cup vegan vanilla custard
- 4 tablespoons black current jam, blueberry or any other berry jam.
- A few fresh berries as topping
- 4 tablespoons powdered sugar icing to drizzle as frosting
for the vanilla custard:
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 cup non-dairy milk (soy, rice, oat)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions:
to make the vanilla custard:
- Combine the cornstarch and sugar in a saucepan.
- Add the non-dairy milk, stir well to mix.
- Heat the mixture, stirring constantly.
- Bring to a boil, while stirring.
- Add the vanilla flavoring.
- When the custard is thick remove from the heat and allow to cool.
to make the pastry:
- Thaw the puff pastry sheets.
- Prepare a cookie sheet with baking parchment.
- Traditionally plunders are round, if you want yours round also, use a small saucer as the outline and cut away the corners of the puff pastry, otherwise, make a a square plunder, like a tart.
- Prepare 4 “bottom” pastries.
- Cut the other 2 pastry sheets in 1/4 strips.
- Lightly wet the edges of the “bottom pastries, with water and lay 2 or 3 strips around the edge so that the edge of the plunders are double thick.
- Preheat the oven to 435 F / 224 C or whatever the puff pastry package recommends.
- Place a tablespoon of the cooled vanilla custard in the center area of the puff pastries. Then carefully, place 2-3 teaspoons of jam on top of that in the center.
- Put a few fresh berries around on top, if you have them.
- Place in the oven to bake for 18-20 minutes or until the puff pastries are lightly golden brown and puffed.
- While the pastries are baking, make the powdered sugar frosting.
- Place the powdered sugar in a small bowl and add a few drops of water – just enough to wet the powdered sugar so that it can be drizzled over the plunder.
- When the pastries are done, remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- Once they have cooled you can drizzle the icing over the top.
- They are delicious with a cup of coffee or a nice black tea.