Plum Cake

Serves 12

Ingredients

180 g softened butter
150 g castor sugar
135 g plain flour
135 g self raising flour
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
70 ml milk
½ cup ground almonds or fresh breadcrumbs
10-12 ripe blood plums, halved and stoned

Topping
60 g butter
½ cup castor sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 large eggs

Summary

This cake comes to your family via mine, and a few others. It’s a Stephanie Alexander recipe that has been around a while now, and she writes that it’s originally from an Austrian friend of her parents. A few years later and my own mother (not Austrian) arrives at the door having made this with blood plums from her Fair Food delivery. We cooked it in my oven, had it warm with a little cream, and gratefully thanked the chain of people intimately linked to the moment – the grain farmers, orchardists, plum-pickers, veggie box packers, recipe custodians and loved ones to share it with, for it was indeed a delicious afternoon plum cake moment.

(Taken from Stephanie Alexander’s tome A Cook’s Companion).

Plum Cake

Preheat the oven to 180˚C and lightly grease a 26cm springform tin.

To make the topping, melt butter and stir in sugar and cinnamon, then allow to cool a little. Whisk eggs well and stir into cooled butter mixture.

For the main cake batter, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in flours and salt. Mix eggs with milk, then add to flour mixture and mix to make a softish dough (it should drop easily from the spoon). Spoon batter into prepared tin (it shouldn’t fill more than a quarter of the depth, as the cake rises a great deal), smooth the top and sprinkle over ground almonds. Arrange plums on top, cut-side up. Spoon topping over and around plums. Bake for 50 min – 1 hour (definitely check at 50 mins, ours was a little burnt at 1 hour) until a fine skewer inserted comes out clean. Serve warm with cream or ice-cream.