plum cake

[42itous]

I've had a handful of requests for this recipe recently, so I'm posting it here where I can link to it.

PLUM CAKE

[I usually double the recipe and use a 9x13 pan. Also, I've gotten good results using other kinds of fruit: peaches, blueberries, apples.]

1 egg
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons melted butter
15-18 Italian blue plums (also called "prune plums")
cinnamon-sugar mixture

Cut the plums in half and lay them face-down on paper towels to soak up some of their juice. Butter and flour a 9x9 baking dish. Preheat oven to 375.
In a medium bowl, beat the egg and add the sugar.
Mix the baking powder into the flour.
Alternate between adding the flour mixture and the milk to the bowl.
Add vanilla and butter.
Pour the batter into the pan.

Set the plum halves into the batter on edge, so they stand up in tightly packed rows. The batter will rise up around them as it bakes.
Sprinkle cinnamon-sugar on top.
Bake for a while (here the original recipe says 30-40 minutes, but I've needed 50-60 minutes, so who knows?) until it looks like it's not raw in the middle.

Comments

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

that looks lovely and delicious. plus, plums.
yum!

[nosrednayduj]

Blueberries are, um, a different size, so presumably you'd just mix them in at the end. How many cups would you use? I may try this with apples; there is an apple potluck scheduled for later this month at work. I was going to make an apple cake with chopped apples, but this would be much prettier. Do you peel the apples when you use them?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I sprinkle the blueberries on top and press them into the batter a little bit, and then add more blueberries one at a time to fill in the gaps, until there aren't any appreciable gaps. I don't really know the volume of that amount of blueberries, but there's no such thing as too many leftover blueberries, right? ;)
I think your strategy of mixing the berries into the batter would also work fine, it just wouldn't give a similar visual effect to the original plum cake.

I peel the apples and cut them into maybe 12ths (quarters and then thirds) and stand the slices up in the batter, former-peel-side up and former-core-side down.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Zwetschgenkuchen!!!!!

(Although I make mine with a pareve cookie dough -- just flour, sugar, eggs, margarine, and a splash of vanilla -- no baking powder or milk in mine.) I was going to bake them yesterday for Rosh Ha-shanah but ran out of time, so I'm making mine tonight.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I had to ask whether the meal was going to be milchig or fleischig -- if it had been fleischig I would have used canola oil and tea instead of butter and milk. Does baking powder have a non-pareve property that I don't know about?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

No, but my family's tradition is for a cookie dough rather than a cake dough.

I also parbake the crust and macerate the plums before arranging them in the crust --- this maximizes the juices (you blot them?!) while keeping the crust crisp.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I guess cookie dough can handle a lot of extra juices, but my cake gets about as much boiling juice as it can handle on its surface and still have its wonderful crunchy cinnamon crust. Sounds like our baked goods are cousins, not siblings. :)

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

Tea?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

If I have to leave the milk out of a recipe for whatever reason, I like to replace it with some liquid that has more flavor than just water. Of course almond milk is an option if I happen to have it, but mostly I don't, so tea is my usual go-to. It'll change the flavor of the recipe a bit, but it can be fun to experiment with various different teas: English Breakfast? Almond? Chamomile? Bengal Spice? Ginger?

[mercurysparkle.livejournal.com]

Yum Yum!!! The visual effect is simply stunning (and it tastes divine!)

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

I have a very similar recipe from my mom. Differences: it has some grated lemon rind in it, you halve the plums and lay them cut-side-up, and then sprinkle cinnamon/sugar and a little lemon juice on top before baking. I should really make a double batch next time; it gets eaten up so fast.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

The lemon zest sounds like a wonderful addition -- I'll try that next time.

[nosrednayduj]

So I tried it with apples. Two problems: Apples are shorter, so the cake spilled out almost above the apples so they appear sunken. And the apples provided so much moisture that the in-between bits took forever to get done so the top got kind of overdone. I think it'll be OK anyway, just kind of crunchy. I'm bringing it to a potluck tomorrow. Yours is prettier with plums.



I guessed COMPLETELY WRONG about how much apples it would take and cut about twice what I needed. So, um, I mixed it with a splodge of cinnamon sugar and flour and threw it in the oven with the cake. Poof, apple pie without the crust!

[42itous.livejournal.com]

It looks yummy! Yeah, it's hard to predict how the batter will behave. I think when I was a kid my mom used a smaller pan, because I remember the batter enveloping the plums more, so they were sunken. You might have better luck next time if you offset the apple slices like bricks.

[nosrednayduj]

Yeah, I didn't remember about the brickwork thing until after I'd baked it and was looking back at your post. I made a second one in an 8x8 pan and didn't put my apples quite so close together (though still in an array) and that one worked better. But for the potluck I wanted to bring the big one. The smaller one was in fact delicious. I also didn't put the cake recipe together in the same way you say to, but it worked fine. (I used canola oil instead of butter because it's healthier and put it and the vanilla in with the eggs and sugar at the beginning. And I made it with 1/3 whole wheat pastry flour because I'm constitutionally opposed to white flour. It could probably take 2/3 without trouble.)

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Good to know! I should get myself some w.w. pastry flour...

[nosrednayduj]

My favorite is the 365 brand by Whole Foods. It's smoother, or something. Bob's Red Mill is OK, but slightly coarser. Whole Foods' bulk is a crap shoot. Arrowhead Mills is also good. I wish they'd package it in 5-lb bags -- I feel stupid bringing 10 2-lb bags to the register...