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

[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.