Sunday 29 September 2013

Easy Plum Cake

Dish: Easy Plum Cake

Difficulty: Well, the title didn't lie for once.

Utensils Used: Electric Whisk, wooden spoon

Cock ups: 2

Recipe Book: All Recipes

Cooking: So, my mother had some plums she needed using. Plums she was given by someone else because they had too many to use. So, I had twenty three plums and not enough time to just eat them before they went off.


So I decided to make a cake. And I decided to invite my sister, Charis, over to help. She's home from boarding school for the weekend and is an expert baker.


I got the task of halving and putting the plums.


Meanwhile, Charis had a disaster kitchen moment and put the flour and butter together, rather than the butter and sugar. It was partly my fault for talking at her about doubling the quantities (so she could take a cake back home for Mum) but also partly autopilot on her part - she makes a lot of crumbles!


Once the 300g of caster sugar and 230g of butter were in the right place, together, Charis whisked them together.


Then she added the 280g of plain flour, 2tsp of baking powder and four eggs (got from the Boyfriend's family this time, as they also have chickens) and mixed it all together.


This finished the basic cake mix.



Meanwhile, I'd finished halving and pitting the plums - a sticky, messy job that took as long as making the mix.


Around this point, the Boyfriend arrived home and wanted to play Playstation with his work colleagues. An internet malfunction drew me away from the kitchen to solve technical difficulties (much more my forte, though this time it was on the internet provider, nothing we'd done) leaving Charis to divide the cake mix between two cake tins.


You can tell Charis was responsible for the plum arrangement. Look at those perfect concentric, symmetric circles. Beautiful. And that blur at the top is me very inelegantly sprinkling on the cinnamon to flavour. Because Mum doesn't like cinnamon, we put ginger on hers instead, along with 1-2 tablespoons of sugar, then placed on a low shelf in the over (preheat 180C) for 40-50 minutes.

Washing Up Required: For once, none! Charis was kind enough to do almost all of it for me. Very generous of her.


Result: This was a very easy recipe (even if I had been doing it myself, I would have managed) and the result smelled so good. The cakes rose nicely, the plums sinking into the mix as it oozed up between them. It came out of the cake tins easily (second cock up - the tins have bases that you can push up to help you get the cake out and I managed to turn the circular side into a burning hot bracelet as I tried to push the cake up and through, almost resulting in the cake flying across the room.) and the slight caramelising of the fruit sugars made it look really nice.

Taste Test: Though everyone agreed that the plums were a bit tarty (muuuuuch more sugar needed!) when eaten without any sort of custard/icecream/cream sweetening it, the sponge was moist and delicious. I ate one piece of cinnamon, one ginger, and neither could be tasted, so I don't think there was any real benefit there.

A friend tried a piece and agreed it was good - he even liked the sharpness of the fruit. 

The boyfriend's verdict: F*cking average.



Overall Verdict: I can't imagine owning an excess of plums enough to make this again in the near future, but perhaps next year when the harvest comes round again I will be looking up this recipe, as it was easy and tasty. Though I would add more sugar!

Easy Plum Cake

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