I really struggle with finding good light for taking my food photos this time of year, when the days are getting shorter and the sun is finding its way differently in the sky. It always takes me a few weeks to adjust to it all. Oh well!
I hope you won't let poor photography dissuade you from baking what is a really lovely cake. I adapted the recipe from one I found on a site called Once Upon a Chef. It looked really nice and I had picked up a couple of punnets of purple plums at the shops as they were on offer.
I adore plums, they are one of my favorite fruits. I was quite disappointed in the plums we bought the other day. They were mealy. I hate mealy fruit. The only way to really use them was to cook them, hence the cake.
I'll be honest here and say I think its really bad that you should buy punnets of mealy fruit at this time of year when fruit is so fresh and readily available! Bad. Bad. Bad. Shouldn't happen!
Mind you, checking the label, upon closer inspection I see that they came from Spain. Why are we importing plums from Spain at a time of the year where fresh plums are ripe and ready for the picking and eating here in the UK? So disappointing!
I shake my head when I think of it all . . . shouldn't happen. Just shouldn't happen.
Anyways, this is a really lovely cake. I am afraid I over-cooked mine a tiny bit. The skewer kept coming out looking like it wasn't cooked in the centre, so I would pop it in for a few more minutes.
So my edges got a bit crispy, but not in an unpalatable way at all!
As Todd was eating it he kept mumbling all the while, this is a really good cake . . . love this cake . . . more cake please . . .
He is a very lucky man. He can eat cake until it comes out his ears . . . and pour cream all over it when he does . . . .
And he never has to worry about any of it sticking to his thighs . . .
Or his bottom, or his neck, cheeks, arms, etc. . . . I really don't think its fair, but it is what it is!
This is a beautiful cake . . . filled with the lovely flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom and that almost jammy fruit, which is tart and sweet at the same time.
For brunch or for dessert, this is one cake you won't want to miss out on . . . and the perfect way to use up less than perfect plums!
Yield: 8
Author: Marie Rayner
Spiced Plum Cake
A beautiful cake that is perfect served for brunch with hot cups of coffee or as a dessert with scoops of vanilla ice cream.ingredients:
- 210g plain flour (1 1/2 cups)
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp each ground nutmeg and ground cardamom
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 115g butter softened, plus more to butter the pan (1/2 cup)
- 190g white sugar, plus 2 TBS, divided (1 cup + 2TBS, divided)
- 1 large free range egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 120ml whole milk (1/2 cup)
- 1 pound fresh plums, pitted and quartered
instructions:
How to cook Spiced Plum Cake
- Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a 9 inch spring form pan really well and dust with flour, shaking out any excess. Set aside.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. Stir in the salt. Set aside.
- Cream the butter and 190g/1 cup of the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla, adding a spoonful of the flour mixture if it starts to curdle. Add the milk alternately with the flour mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, levelling it off. Scatter the plums over top decoratively. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 TBS of sugar.
- Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, until golden and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the cake.
- Run a knife carefully around the edge of the cake to loosen, and then loosen the sides of the pan. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Cut into slices to serve. You can dust this with icing sugar if you want to pretty it up a bit!
I am not really sure what I will have to share with you tomorrow. I am going to leave it as a bit of a surprise. I don't think you will be disappointed at any rate, or at least I hope that you won't!
