What to do with a load of plums from your Dad’s plum tree? Make a chutney it’ll take five years to get through? Jam I’ll probably never eat? No. The obvious solution to my abundance of plums: plum cake! I’ve never made. Only eaten. My mum is a huge fan of the plum cake. I didn’t want to let her down. The pressure. Was. On. I found this recipe on BBC Good Food. I loved that it had spices in it. Made it sound warm and wintery. And it was! A few people remarked how it tasted like bread and butter pudding. I myself have never eaten bread and butter pudding. Because it sounds disgusting. Bread? In a pudding? So wrong. But it seems, I am wrong. If it tastes like this cake then I have been missing out. Here’s how to make it:
Ingredients
- butter, for greasing
- 2 tbsp demerara sugar
- 500g plums
For the cake
- 175g butter
- 175g dark muscovado sugar
- 140g golden syrup
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 200ml milk
- 300g self-raising flour
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp mixed spice
Method
- Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line the base of a 23cm square cake tin with baking parchment. Butter the paper generously and sprinkle with the demerara sugar. Halve the plums and arrange in the base of the tin in 1 layer, cut-sides down.
- For the cake, melt the butter, muscovado sugar and syrup in a large pan over a low heat, stirring until smooth. Cool for 10 mins, then stir in the eggs and milk. Sift in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices, then mix to a smooth batter.
- Pour the batter into the tin, over the plums, and bake for 45-55 mins until firm to the touch. Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool. Will keep in the fridge, wrapped in baking parchment and foil, for up to 5 days.
recipe from: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/gingery-plum-cake
Now I am a bit dense. Like this cake in fact, but less tart. It didn’t occur to me that cakes with fruit in them are supposed to be displayed with the fruit on top. I turned the cake out and over so the plums were underneath. It was messy. It was difficult. I could have saved myself a lot of bother had I been more knowledgeable in the art of fruity cakes. I learnt a valuable lesson that day. Still, it tasted good. REAL good. Especially when served warm with lashings of double cream. Its the kind of cake that makes you giggle whilst eating it. Or is that just me?
As you can see below, this is what happens when you try to turn a fruity cake the wrong way round. Escapee juices and a bit of splat. Not ideal. I have to say in my defense though, the top was very domed. I’m not sure how it would have coped fruit side up. Perhaps it worked out for the best???
Sasa
iprefercakestopeople 